Face
by JMcK
Summary: A traumatized young agent... It takes one to know one. Something's happened to JJ. Reid can't ignore it anymore.
1. Prologue

_Author's note: I've been meaning to try my hand at Criminal Minds fanfic for a while now, and finally have a bit of time on my hands. This is just a prologue. Short and sweet, and hopefully intriguing. The title seems either inexplicable or hokey now, I'm sure, but it'll go somewhere, if there's any interest in my continuing this. _

_Hope you enjoy. Feedback rocks my world. _

**Face**

Prologue

_It was like she was surrounded by dogs_.

The thought hit Reid as he noted the slight tremble of JJ's fingers as she reached for her ringing cell phone.

That look seemed to _live_ in her eyes now.

It was familiar to him.

For the past few months, he'd noticed a silent, subtle reaction in her every time they had to call in the canine unit.

Her fingers would drift down to her gun. Repeatedly. Like she just had to keep checking. Making sure it was there.

She'd get quiet. Try so hard to be inconspicuous that she became… well… conspicuous. At least to him.

And there would be a look in her eyes. Like something he couldn't see was trying to crush her.

Like she was just forcing herself to get through the moment.

Now, it seemed she was just forcing herself to get through the day.

Those moments had actually been a comfort to him, when they were relatively few and far between. It wasn't that he took joy in seeing her suffer. Far from it. But if _she_ could deal with a trauma – a smaller trauma than his – and be oh-so-slightly impaired in her work, and yet keep working efficiently overall… well, then maybe so could he.

There was no joy in seeing her like this, though. This wasn't about little moments that made him feel like he wasn't the only one struggling along.

Two weeks ago, she had called in sick for only the second time in the three years that they had been working together. The other time, she'd had a fever of 102.6.

Upon returning to work, she had offered little more explanation than that she'd caught a flu bug. She'd seemed a little disoriented, but when he dared to express concern - after the third time he'd called her name and gotten no response – she'd assured him she was just trying to remember her 'to do' list. She just wasn't herself without her PDA, she said.

That had been her excuse a lot lately. If she was late to a meeting, if she forgot that she was supposed to return a call… it was all the fault of her lost PDA.

'Forgetting' things and showing up late wasn't like her, and he didn't buy that she couldn't keep track without some kind of digital organizer.

Something was wrong. Something had happened.

While he was mulling all of this over, she looked up and caught him watching her. Their eyes met and held across the space between them in the small jet, and after a moment of awkwardness on his part and something he couldn't read on hers, she forced a simple little friendly smile, and turned back to flip through the same thin file folder for the sixth time.

She clearly couldn't concentrate.

It was all a mystery to him. A mystery he cared to solve. For her sake, and maybe a little bit for his. She'd been his best medicine over the past few months since the Hankel case had gone so horribly wrong.

He had seen her on a Friday. The weekend had gone by. Something had kept her away from work on the Monday. Over those three days, she'd lost her PDA.

In the two weeks that had passed since then, she had been distracted. Tired. Jumpy. Defensive.

And she had that look in her eyes.

Like she was surrounded by dogs.

…


	2. Chapter 1

_Author's note: Much thanks for the lovely reviews! Nice to see that some people are interested. Here's the first full chapter… I'd love to hear what you think. _

**Face**

Chapter One

…

_Be fond of the man who jests at his scars, but never believe he is being on the level with you. _

– American author Pamela Hansford Johnson

…

"I need you to let me do this."

Reid looked hopefully at Gideon, who only looked confused.

"For what purpose? The woman has been interviewed."

"But not by us! The local police probably didn't know what to look for."

"She wasn't a witness. The only purpose she served was to help us get to know her daughter. Victimology. That's it."

Gideon tossed his right hand, dismissing the point, and turned to continue down the hall. They were in a field office in Michigan, working a serial kidnap and murder case.

Reid followed him.

The truth was that he didn't have a good reason to want to fly back to New York to interview the mother of the first of the kidnapped teenage girls.

But for reasons of his own, he wanted to find one.

"What if we didn't take the victimology far enough? She might be able to help us."

Gideon kept walking, but uttered a short little indulgent sigh.

"Reid, if you've got a theory, let's hear it. Quickly. I'm on my way to conduct local witness interviews."

Reid thought fast. Trying to force a mental connection between case facts. As much because he needed justification for this trip as because the case needed a break.

His mind scanned through a mental log of potentially relevant information… bit by bit, lightning fast.

Thinking… thinking… searching… walking faster and faster, forced to pick up his pace as Gideon did…

And then he stumbled onto something.

"The first girl was held by the ocean," he blurted out, the idea taking form in his head. It was a long shot, but it would have to do. "She could hear the water. She could see it out the window. It always seemed odd that he put her in a room with a view. A window, it's an unnecessary risk. Even a reinforced one, even facing nothing but water." Reid gulped in a breath, and kept talking. "Angela Johnston was a swimmer. She loved the water. And this guy kept it in view, but out of reach."

Gideon finally slowed down.

"You're suggesting the location is chosen for the individual girl, based on her personal interests?"

"Maybe!"

"What about the second girl? She was a student, an amateur gymnast. She was found in an abandoned warehouse." Gideon spoke in a contemplative tone. Not rejecting the idea. Simply challenging Reid to take it further.

"I don't have the connection," Reid admitted. "But if I could talk to her mother, find out more about her --"

"Now you want to talk to the second victim's mother?" Gideon asked, cutting him off.

"Yes. I do."

"So now you want to fly to Florida?"

"Me and JJ, actually."

Gideon's eyes narrowed, looking vaguely suspicious.

"Why JJ?"

Reid swallowed hard. That had probably been too abrupt.

He rarely, if ever, requested a specific partner, and they both knew it.

He briefly considered telling Gideon the truth – that he needed a chance to talk to JJ alone, to try to get a sense of what was going on with her, because she mattered to him, and her demeanor of late was scaring him.

But sticking with the case seemed like a safer bet.

"This woman lost her daughter. She's going through hell. JJ knows how to talk to people who are going through hell."

Gideon looked Reid over. Sensing something personal in the vaguely pleading look in his eyes. Wondering if he had something to do with the reason that JJ wasn't on her game lately.

But Reid had a good working theory, a reasonable request.

"I'll run it by Hotch," he promised.

…

Reid found Morgan, JJ and Prentiss in a small conference room, halfway through their takeout lunch.

Morgan tossed a wrapped submarine sandwich at him as soon as he came through the door.

"Chicken and lettuce, light on the mayo, no cheese," Morgan recited as Reid fumbled to catch the sandwich.

"Thanks," Reid mumbled, checking that the sandwich was fully wrapped as he picked it up from the ground. "Nice of you to remember."

"Don't go taking that too personal," Morgan told him. "Too many dinners in a surveillance car together, is all. And I do mean too many." He leaned back in his chair, and smiled so Reid would know he was teasing.

Reid took the empty seat next to JJ, across from Morgan and Prentiss.

They all ate silently for a moment or two, until Morgan couldn't take the silence and tense looks surrounding him.

"What's goin' on up there?" he asked Prentiss, tossing a finger in the general direction of her head.

"Just thinking about the case. Worrying about the case, actually, might be more accurate."

"Worrying? You think we're not going to get this one?"

"I'm thinking we might not get him _in time_," Prentiss clarified. "If the pattern holds steady, we've got less than two days before this girl dies, and this bastard has been five steps ahead of us at every turn."

"Maybe she'd be better off," JJ said softly, as much to herself as to the others, and then she looked up when she realized they were all gaping at her. "I'm not saying I don't want to get to her in time," she said emphatically, quickly backtracking. "I've, uh… just… been doing some reading lately…" She stumbled through an explanation, throwing together justification for the impulsive thought she wished she hadn't said out loud. "I always… keep up with recent psychological literature… on communicating with trauma victims. Not that it's recent, any of this, but it's been on my mind because I've been… doing the reading…" She took a deep breath, pushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear. "What these girls are going through… their lives as they know them are gone. Even if we get there, and they survive… some of them will wish they hadn't." She looked around warily, and found them all still stunned silent.

Reid watched JJ turn her eyes back to her salad, uncomfortable under Morgan's and Prentiss' critical gaze.

So he jumped in to help her out.

"Actually, she's not wrong at all. Anyone with post traumatic stress disorder is at an increased risk of suicide. With these girls… Almost thirty-five percent of rape victims consider suicide, and almost half of those actually make the attempt. Given that these girls are being held for days, assaulted over and over again…"

"So, what, then? What's that mean for us?" Morgan asked. "You trying to say these girls would rather we let him kill them?"

"No --"

"You think we're wasting our time?" Morgan challenged, clearly bothered by the notion.

"No, not at all, that's not what we're saying. It's not that they all want to die, or that they should be allowed to even make that choice in that state, and the sooner we catch the guy the fewer victims he has, anyway. I'm just saying, and I think _we're_ just saying… As agents, we solve the case… and then we move on. The victims don't really get to."

Morgan looked from Reid to JJ. She refused to meet his eyes.

There was a sudden knock on the door, and they all looked up to find Hotch poking his head into the room.

"Reid, I talked to Gideon, I like your idea, it's you and JJ, wheels up in thirty."

Hotch disappeared as suddenly as he'd appeared, rushing off to deal with some problem or other.

JJ turned to Reid.

"What idea?"

"You and me," Reid told her. "Taking victimology a step further." He spoke pointedly, and she noticed, but chose to ignore it.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Florida. To talk to Caroline Montgomery's mother."

"Why?"

"Let's just get going. I'll tell you on the way."

Reid dropped the remains of his sandwich in the garbage on his way out the door. JJ followed him.

Morgan turned to Prentiss. Still stuck on the conversation he'd been having with the two younger agents.

"We're supposed to be thinking like the unsub. Not the victim." He spoke quietly, neutrally.

"Maybe they can't anymore."

Morgan looked back at the door, where they'd both just disappeared.

"I get that, for him. What the hell happened to her?"

"I'd guess being mauled by wild dogs is --"

"No, come on, Girl, don't give me that. That was months ago. She was okay. She was helping Reid get closer to 'okay'. Come on, straight up, you've noticed too, am I right? JJ's been off for days."

Hotch reappeared at the door, before Prentiss had a chance to respond.

"I need you," he told them simply.

And for the moment, JJ and Reid were forgotten.

…

Reid had talked JJ into playing a game of cards.

It seemed like a good idea. Something to put them both at ease.

Now that they were in the middle of it, though – and also in the middle of their flight, with half of the alone time he'd fought for already gone – he wasn't sure how to make the transition from 'game' to 'serious discussion'.

She reached out to draw a card from the deck, and her sleeve slipped back. He glanced at the flawless skin of her forearm.

Maybe that was the way to enter into this.

"Your arm looks good," he said, breaking the silence.

"What?" She shot him a confused look.

"Your, um, your arm, it looks good," he repeated, hoping she hadn't taken that as some kind of bizarre attempt at flirting. The look on her face told him she hadn't made the mental connection, so he clarified. "I just meant, um, the barn. The dogs. You don't have any scars."

She just looked at him for a moment, a bit thrown, and then nodded, and glanced down at her own arm. Hesitating as she figured out what to say.

"Lucky me."

She discarded, putting the ball back into his court in the card game, as well as in the conversation.

He searched through his handful of cards, not really looking at them, trying to figure out how to continue the conversation.

And then she surprised him, by speaking up on her own.

"Can I ask you something?" she said quietly.

He looked up at her. Encouraged.

"Yeah, yeah, of course you can."

"Does… um… I've been thinking… you've got this amazing memory… does that make it harder? I mean, that's really what trauma is. Remembering things… that you don't want to remember. And I keep thinking… I don't know how you do it."

Reid sat back against his chair. Thinking.

"I don't really know if it makes me different or not. I mean, it does, of course it does, in general, but as far as this… and the Hankel case… The eidetic memory is really about what I read. And also, there were the drugs. The drugs made my memory of all the time in the cabin pretty hazy."

He looked over at her. Finding her eyes sympathetic. Focused on him.

"I have it on pretty good authority that hazy memories can be hard to take," she told him, and he wasn't sure if she was trying to tell him something with that or not.

"You're not talking about what happened during the Hankel case, are you?" He asked quietly. Gently. Trying to talk to her the way he'd heard her talk to the victims in their cases.

He thought for a moment that she was going to open up to him. She seemed about to say something that mattered.

But then she shut down. She looked away and threw a random card on the pile.

"Sure I am."

"JJ --"

"It's your turn."

She refused to look at him.

He wanted to press her further. But it seemed to him that in that one moment that she had been about to say something, she'd also been about to cry.

And he wasn't sure how well he'd be able to handle that.

He wasn't giving up, though.

It would be just the two of them again on the way back to Michigan, after the interview with Mrs. Montgomery.

He made a promise to himself that he'd talk to her then.

…

By the time they returned to the private plane late that night, Reid was focused on the case.

His ulterior motives for this interview had actually yielded a significant lead, and he needed to let his mind work the details while it was in its excited state.

The second victim had dreamed of being a musician. It was something she kept from most of her family and friends, something she never pursued. But something she posted about in an online blog almost daily. Her mother hadn't found out about the blog until she found and read her daughter's diary, and it hadn't seemed to her to be relevant to the investigation.

But it _was _relevant. The abandoned building she'd been found in had once been a recording studio – it still had the company logo displayed prominently on the wall.

Reid had gotten them that much closer to finding the third victim – almost without even trying.

"If he's finding his victims over the internet, that explains why he's moving around the country," Reid babbled, as much to himself as to JJ, when she hung up her phone and came to sit across from him.

"What are you writing?" she asked curiously.

"I'm brainstorming! Locations. Shawna Degrassi has about a day left to live unless I can figure out what is it about her personality that would give this guy some kind of place to use to taunt her."

"Can't you just get Garcia to go through her online history?"

"I already called her. The computer's being sent. But we can't be sure yet that he's finding them over the Internet."

Reid scribbled furiously for several minutes, jotting down stream-of-consciousness notes and ideas.

Nothing came to him, and he ended up standing up to pace back and forth.

"I can't figure it out," he all but mumbled.

"You will," JJ told him. "Step away. Clear your head."

She was staring out the window as she spoke, not looking at him. She sounded exhausted.

And it reminded Reid that it was late, and also getting to be late in the flight, and he was supposed to be talking to his distracted and apparently endlessly sleep-deprived friend.

And he wasn't getting anywhere with the case right now, anyway.

He tossed the notebook he'd been writing in onto the table and sat down across from her again.

He said nothing for a moment, and her gaze remained locked on the darkness outside the window.

Her eyes looked troubled, which was the norm for her lately, and it spurred him on.

He decided to come right out with it.

"You don't seem okay lately," he said simply, sounding a bit tentative.

She turned her head toward him. Her expression guarded.

"I'm okay."

"You don't _seem_ okay," he repeated, looking down at the table and then back up at her, a bit uncomfortable, but determined.

"I think, earlier, just… talking about the Hankel case, about what happened to you, and then about the barn… put me in a mood."

She tried to smile and shrug.

But he wasn't buying it.

"This isn't about the Hankel case. This is… it's recent."

"Reid, I'm fine."

"I don't believe you."

He was simple and straightforward with her, and he waited several seconds for her to say something else.

And then, suddenly, she smiled as if something was funny.

"It's just silly. It is. I just let a case get to me."

"What case?" he asked, willing to let her tell a tale, but immediately thinking that it didn't seem like the answer.

"Do you remember North Mammon?"

"Yeah. How could I forget?"

"I liked those girls. I cared about those girls… I really identified with those girls."

He nodded. Waiting for her to continue.

"Look, two weeks ago," she told him, and he mentally checked off the time period in his head, as a fact that supported her story. "My aunt turned sixty, and my family threw this big party, and I went, and… Judy Homefeldt, Polly's mom, she's a friend of my aunt's, remember?"

He nodded his acknowledgement. And she continued.

"She was there. And I talked to her for a long while. I always knew those girls were going to have trouble moving on. I mean, who wouldn't? The kind of guilt they'd have to feel, even though it wasn't really their fault…"

JJ seemed lost in thought at that, and Reid found himself wondering if all of this was truly what had been weighing on her mind.

She continued.

"Mrs. Homefeldt told me that Brooke killed herself. Cut her wrists." She paused, and looked up to meet his eyes. "Polly tried to do the same. Only with pills. Not long after Brooke's suicide. If her mom hadn't found her…" JJ let her voice trail off. "I guess I've… just been thinking about the victims since then. Thinking _like_ a victim since then." She laughed a hollow, short little laugh. "Guess that's why I'm not a profiler. But really, it's just these cases. I care too much. But I'm fine."

She gave him a forced little smile, and he nodded as if he understood.

It didn't explain everything. It didn't give her any reason to be jumpy and defensive. And it didn't explain the look of fear he so often saw in her eyes.

But she certainly seemed sincere. And she _had_ seemed particularly emotionally invested in that specific case.

At least she'd given him something he could check out.

…

"Garcia, it's Reid," he whispered into the phone.

"Why the cloak-and-dagger voice?" Garcia asked curiously.

Reid glanced at JJ, asleep on the couch on the other side of the plane.

"JJ's asleep," he told her. "We're on the plane."

"You're coming back?"

"Not to Virginia. We were interviewing one of the mothers. In Florida. We're headed back to Michigan now."

"You going to give me a challenge?" she asked eagerly.

"Not really. I need you to tell me if you have any record of the death of a Brooke Chambers."

It took Garcia only a few seconds.

"Suicide. Almost three months ago. Isn't she the girl from your case in --"

"Yeah, she is." Reid cut her off. "How about a Polly Homefeldt?"

A few more seconds passed.

"Nothing in the papers."

"Okay, one more thing." He hesitated for just a second. "I need you to look up JJ's family."

"What?"

"It's a personal favor. I need to know how many aunts she has, and when their birthdays are."

"Okay, I know you're the brains of the operation around here, but would it not be easier and also less sneaky to wait for JJ to wake up and ask her for this information?"

"No. And JJ can't know that I asked you for this."

A beat of silence told him Garcia wasn't thrilled with this.

"Explain," she demanded.

Reid looked to be sure JJ was still out, and dropped his voice to an even lower volume.

"Have you noticed anything weird about JJ lately?" he asked her.

"Um, if by 'weird' you mean that the Sunshine moniker has become completely and totally inappropriate --"

"Okay, yes. Yes. Something's wrong. And I'm trying to help. And you're supposed to be her friend. And it's not like I'm asking for sensitive information here. I _would_ ask JJ myself, except she'd know why I was asking."

"Why _are_ you asking?"

"Garcia, please…"

She sighed audibly.

"Okay, two aunts," She said, when she came back on the line a minute later. "Far as I can tell from what I've got here, anyway."

"And how old are they?"

"Forty-six and sixty."

Reid shifted the phone, listening intently.

"When did the sixty-year-old turn sixty?"

"December tenth of last year."

"Thanks, Garcia." Reid hung up the phone and exhaled a slow breath.

December of last year was months ago.

The story she'd told about Brooke and Polly appeared to be true, and it could explain her intensified focus on the victims in their cases.

But she'd lied about the time frame.

There was no denying that whatever had happened to change her had happened within the last few weeks. It had to be something else. Something she felt the need to lie about.

He got up and walked over closer to her, taking note of the look on her face.

Even in sleep, she didn't look peaceful. Her brow was creased, her hand curled into a fist.

He wondered if she was dreaming.

Given the content of his own dreams in recent months, he hoped not.

He resolved to talk to her again soon. Even if she fought him on it.

They'd already lost Elle, indirectly thanks to her own trauma.

And this was _JJ_.

He couldn't let history repeat itself.

Not with her.

…


	3. Chapter 2

_Author's note: Thank you so much for the great reviews! Keeps me going. I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter. We get into JJ's mind in this one (as opposed to just seeing her through Reid's eyes, although there is plenty of his POV here, and some of the rest of the team, as well) and I'm hoping you'll find that a compelling way to build the story. _

_Enjoy! _

**Face**

Chapter Two

…

_The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart._

– Saint Jerome

…

"No, I'm fine. I'm fine. Just… needed to hear your voice. Again. Yeah. You too. Bye."

JJ hung up the phone and released a long, slow, relieved sigh.

For one more night… or at least, one more moment… she could breathe a little bit easier.

She rested her elbows on the hotel room desk she was seated at, and then let her head fall into her hands.

Until a few weeks ago, on a night like this she would have turned on the nightly news, and then gone to bed.

But sleep didn't come easily these days, and the news inevitably covered some story that heaped guilt on her already over-burdened soul.

And she didn't need that tonight.

No, what she needed was a distraction. Something to help her forget that she was stuck between the cruelest of rocks and hard places. That the once uber-capable Special Agent Jennifer Jareau was now a shell of her former self. Failing to cope. And impeding justice to boot.

The only thing she could seem to do efficiently these days was pretend. For the most part, she'd been able to keep the team from suspecting anything was up.

Except when it came to a certain genius, she mentally amended, as she pulled open the mini-bar fridge.

She couldn't remember ever actually partaking in the contents of the mini-bar during a case before. She couldn't remember ever drinking alone before, either.

But she needed a little liquid relaxation tonight.

She had just barely finished pouring herself a drink when there was a knock on the door.

She jumped, startled, sloshing liquid onto the blouse she still hadn't changed out of. A jolt shot through her upper body as her heartbeat sped up.

She cursed under her breath – cursing both herself and whoever was at the door.

It was probably Hotch, wanting to tell her what time he needed her in the morning. Or Morgan, wanting to borrow her iPod battery charger. Or Reid. Gideon. Prentiss.

It was probably nothing.

Almost certainly nothing.

And yet she had to force herself to move. One foot in front of the other. Until she was at the door, and she could lean in and look through the peep hole, to see --

Reid.

…

Reid waited patiently for the door to swing open.

But when it did, the sight of JJ in a generic hotel room with an undoubtedly alcoholic beverage in hand produced an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu.

"You're drinking," he said unnecessarily, dismayed.

"I'm having _a drink_," JJ clarified, just the slightest hint of annoyance lining her tone.

"Elle was drinking in Ohio."

They looked at each other for a moment, standing on opposite sides of the door.

JJ seemed to be deciding how to respond to that.

"I'm not Elle."

"No, you're JJ," he told her, with a shy little smile. "And that's kind of worse."

Her eyes narrowed. Intrigued.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Her voice was quiet.

"Can I come in?" he asked timidly, ignoring her question. He'd left her alone all day, focused on working the case, but he felt the need to check in now.

She hesitated for just a minute, then held open the door for him to enter.

She closed the door behind him, and they both stayed standing.

"This doesn't seem like you," he said, trying to keep his tone neutral.

"Maybe I'm sick of being 'like me'."

It was an odd comment, and when she didn't elaborate he filed it away as something to consider.

He decided to take an honest, direct approach.

"I know you lied to me."

"What?"

"About what's bothering you lately. You're covering. You found out about what happened to those girls from North Mammon months ago."

She looked confused. Startled. And not entirely unlike a deer caught in headlights.

"I can't quite figure out exactly when," he continued. "Because as far as I can tell your aunt's birthday came just before Brooke's suicide --"

"What are you doing?" She sounded distinctly pissed off. "Why is it any of your business that -- my aunt? And my family? We celebrate her birthday over the holiday, when we're all in town for Christmas. That okay with you? How did you even know when my aunt's birthday is?"

"I called Garcia. I sort of… had her investigate… you."

It was like flipping a switch.

A raw panic sparked in her eyes.

Her shaky hands reached out as if to touch him, but stopped just short of actually making contact.

"What did you say to her?!" She sounded desperate. Anger entirely replaced by fear.

"JJ, what's going on?"

"Where were you? Who else have you talked to?"

"I haven't talked to anyone else. And I just called her from the plane."

"You called her at work?"

"Yes."

"From your cell phone?"

"Yes."

She drew in a deep breath. Looking like he knew she did when her thoughts were racing. Her eyes as troubled as ever.

He looked her over, at a loss. Not sure if he wanted to apologize to her or interrogate her or embrace her.

She turned away from his intense, studious gaze, running her hands nervously through her hair.

And when she turned back, she'd apparently settled on a new approach.

"I did it for you," she told him, sounding like she was _trying_ to sound cold.

"Did what?"

"I let you be. I let you deal, your way. You think none of us have noticed that you're not all right since Georgia? I didn't force anything out of you. I told you jokes. I played cards. I tried to help you feel normal. And I'd really appreciate it if you could return the favor."

He fell silent for a moment, searching for a response.

She wasn't entirely wrong, but…

"This is different," he finally spit out.

"Why?"

"Because that was over. It was about dealing with things after the fact. And I'm… I'm trained to observe human behavior. And I'm standing here, and – and – and I'm looking at you, and… And it's not about what you say. It's about the look on your face. Whatever this is, it's… it's not over. It isn't something that happened. It's _happening_."

She turned away again, quickly this time. He'd nailed it.

After a moment she turned back. Tears shining in her eyes.

And she started _pleading_.

"You have to stop…" She shook her head wearily. "You have to let this go… I need you to just stop… You have no idea what you're doing…"

"I just wanted to help." It came out sounding like an apology. "I still do."

"Then do for me what I'd do for you."

Her watery eyes looked at him hopefully, expectantly.

He let his gaze fall to the floor, considering.

Thinking about letting it go _for the moment_.

"I guess… I guess that would be… making you get something to eat, and making some really bad jokes?" He offered her a little smile. A temporary reprieve.

He could see the relief _wash over her_ at the thought that the subject was dropped.

And that only served to worry him further.

…

Reid couldn't let it go for long at all.

Maybe it was that it was a nice change to worry about someone else's troubles rather than his own.

Or maybe it was that he really was _that_ afraid for her. That he cared that much.

Whatever the reason, by the time the waitress at the hotel restaurant had brought their food, he found himself watching her intently, and contemplating his next move.

He had learned a little human dynamics trick years ago, long before he ever took on an official role as a profiler.

It was one of few things he felt he'd learned from his father, however indirectly.

Angry people said things they didn't mean to say. It was as simple as that.

Angering someone was often the quickest and easiest way to get them to talk. To tell the truth. (Or, more accurately, in his experience, to _yell_ the truth.)

It seemed a slightly risky route to take with JJ at this point, but he was willing to do it, if it could lead to her letting him in.

He was reluctant to shake her out of the calm she'd fought to regain over the last hour or so.

But when the 'new message' notification tone rang out from her cell phone, panic flickered across her face before she could mask it.

And it propelled him forward.

"What if that was Hotch!" he cried out as she stuck the phone in her pocket without looking at it. There was an accusatory note in his tone – quite intentionally.

"He would have just called," JJ said with a shrug, reaching for her drink.

Reid took a deep breath, and decided to go for it.

"If you're so okay," he began, irritatedly, "Why have you not contributed a single thing to this investigation?"

She gaped at him. Completely thrown.

"I… have."

"Like what?"

She just stared at him for another moment, in total disbelief.

"I've been…" She swallowed hard. "I've been in contact with the local chief of police all day every day since we got here, and when we need a press conference --"

"We both know you usually do a lot more than that."

"I'm not a profiler!"

"You're not much of anything, on this case. What are you going to say to Hotch when he notices?"

Reid was aiming for a reply something along the lines of an angry _'I'll tell him someone's been harassing me and I'm doing the best that I can!'_

Just an admission of some kind that they could move forward from.

But JJ didn't reply at all.

She stood up and walked quickly – and purposefully – away, heading straight out of the restaurant and into the hotel lobby.

"JJ?!" He stood up to try to go after her, but a burly waiter caught him by the arm.

"Hey, Pal, just 'cause you piss off your girlfriend doesn't mean you both get to skip out on the bill!"

"But -- just -- she's not even my…"

Defeated, Reid stopped struggling, sighed, and reached for his wallet.

…

JJ knocked out a quick rhythm of beats on Hotch's hotel room door.

It took him only a few seconds to open it.

"Barely caught me, I was just about to turn in. What's up?"

"I'm, uh, hopped up on caffeine," she lied. "I feel like working. I need all the files on this case. Whatever we have here at the hotel."

"You sure? Tomorrow could be a long day --"

"I'm sure. You have them?"

"No. Emily was actually taking a look through…" Hotch let his voice trail off as JJ took off down the hall without a word, looking tunnel-visioned, heading past Morgan's door, right to the room Prentiss was occupying.

She knocked out another quick succession of beats, until Emily appeared at her door.

"I need the case files you've been working on," JJ told her.

"I was actually just finishing up on a particular angle, but --"

"Okay. I'll come back for that one." JJ gave her a look that said _'I'm waiting'_, and though Emily shot her a quizzical look, she disappeared into her room for a moment and returned with an armful of folders.

"Everything okay?" Emily asked, handing them over.

"Yeah. Sure."

Hotch and Emily exchanged a glance from their respective doors, wondering at JJ's decidedly un-JJ-like clipped tone.

At that moment, a slightly winded Spencer Reid stepped off of the elevator.

"JJ!"

"Sorry about the bill, I'll get some cash tomorrow," JJ muttered, without looking at him.

Morgan showed up then, sticking his head out of his door.

"We havin' a little pow-wow in the hall?" he asked.

Reid ignored him, following JJ toward her room.

"I'm not worried about the bill," he told her. "I'm sorry I --"

"Don't be. You just supplied a little motivation. I'm going to live with these files until I can find some kind of break in this case, and then you're going to accept that there is nothing going on that I can't handle." She shoved her key card into the lock on her door, and pushed the door open. And then she met his eyes. "And then you're going to back off," she told him sharply.

The door slammed in his face, and he turned around to find Hotch, Prentiss and Morgan all still standing in their doorways, wearing identical looks of curiosity and confusion.

And if that wasn't enough, an annoyed Jason Gideon stepped out into the hall, from his room across from JJ's.

"What the hell's going on out here?"

"Reid, is there anything I should know about?" Hotch asked, quite seriously.

Reid hesitated. How to put this?

"It's, um… mostly personal…" He hesitated again, unsure about how they would interpret that. "At the moment it would seem to actually be motivating her to work harder, so no problem, right?"

Hotch and Gideon exchanged a glance.

"And if that changes…?" Hotch prompted.

"You'll be the first to know," Reid promised.

"Then goodnight," Hotch said simply, before retreating into the privacy of his room.

Gideon did the same, and Prentiss followed their lead a moment later.

Morgan caught Reid's eye.

"You okay?" Morgan's tone was as casual as ever, but not without real concern.

Reid held his gaze for a moment.

Thinking about telling the truth.

That he was a mess, and JJ was a mess, and he wasn't sure he could help her, and he wasn't sure he could live with himself if he didn't help her, and he wasn't sure he could live with losing her like they'd lost Elle.

And there was a syringe in his room with his name written all over it.

And he was starting to wonder what exactly constituted crossing the line between 'user' and 'addict'.

But he said none of this.

Because he was as reluctant to share his secrets as JJ was – as all of them were.

And so he only nodded.

And headed down the hall to his own room.

…

JJ stayed up all night.

All. Damn. Night.

Poring over page after page of case notes. Cursing Morgan's handwriting and Emily's idiosyncratic short hand and her own blurring, burning eyes.

She was vaguely aware of a feeling of gratitude buried somewhere in the back of her mind, because she had a reason not to even try to face going to sleep tonight.

She felt like she was part amateur profiler, part detective.

Reid had made copious notes from his interview with Shawna Degrassi's parents. And he'd been thorough in the interview. Every place they could think of that might mean something to her was noted and then speculated on, sometimes for pages.

But if any of it had amounted to anything, the team wouldn't still be here.

And she fully intended to find whatever connection he had missed.

The sun was just beginning to come up when something caught her eye, and she fumbled blindly for her cell phone, and dialed a familiar number.

"Unghhh…" was Garcia's early-morning version of 'hello'.

"Garcia?"

"Jayje?... You'd better be on fire."

"I need you."

"I'm sleeping. I'm curled up in bed. In my favorite pajamas. Dreaming that it really is raining men --"

"Garcia, what kind of information do you have access to from home?"

Garcia was silent for a moment, then answered begrudgingly:

"More than I should."

"I need you," JJ told her again, and then she could hear a muffled grumbling and shuffling.

"The baby's booting up," Garcia said sleepily. "You do realize that there are other people who do my job? People whose shifts extend to this ungodly hour?"

"Ah, but they're not you," JJ said amiably, because with Garcia, flattery really did get you everywhere.

"They do try," Garcia replied, contentedly, and in the silence that followed, JJ found herself wondering what exactly Reid had said to Garcia about her.

But she sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up voluntarily.

"Give me something," Garcia demanded after another minute or so had passed.

"Local farms. Local in a pretty relative sense. Any recent complaints."

JJ waited for a reply, and then grabbed a pen to take down the information Garcia gave her.

She sighed as she ended the call, and glanced at her notepad.

It had to be a barn.

…

JJ knocked hard on the hotel room doors of her team mates, walking down the hall on one side and then working her way back on the other.

They might be less than thrilled to be woken a half hour earlier than usual, but they'd get over that quickly when they heard she had a potential break in the case.

It took well over a minute before anyone appeared in the hallway, which probably meant they were throwing on decent clothes.

Hotch was first to emerge, a bit bleary-eyed, but looking interested.

"You found something?" he asked immediately.

"Shawna Degrassi's favorite place to spend the night as a kid was her uncle's place, his old-fashioned loft," JJ began, outlining the basic point. "She used the actual loft space itself like a hideout. She still goes back there. Likes to write poems there."

"I worked on that angle, for, like, almost an hour," Reid insisted, as the others began to file out into the hallway and listen in. "But it doesn't work. He holds the girls in near-deserted areas, presumably because he can't be seen bringing them there. And we can't find any record of abandoned loft buildings nearby."

"I realize that, I spent most of the night reading your notes, but I looked at it another way. I thought of it when I saw the mention about her grandparents' farm. Where do you find a remote, isolated building with a kind of loft?"

Reid's mouth dropped open slightly.

"A hay loft. A barn." JJ nodded her agreement, glancing at the others for approval.

"He could… what, have her bound on the ground level, facing the loft?" Morgan suggested.

"It's a bit of a long shot, but it's worth looking into," Hotch agreed. He glanced at his watch. "Garcia won't be at work yet, but we can --"

"I already did," JJ cut him off. "There was a complaint registered from a farmer about forty-five minutes from here regarding a suspicious car that's been reappearing on his property over the past few days. He has an old barn that hasn't been used in years."

JJ looked Hotch in the eye, waiting for a decision of some kind.

He nodded at her, which usually meant she was to place a call to get all the necessary personnel to the scene.

This time, he tacked a simple bit of praise onto the gesture.

"Good work."

…

It was almost an hour later that JJ found herself standing a good distance from the barn in question, watching and waiting.

She could have been a part of the team that was now approaching the barn, if she'd wanted to.

But she didn't.

She almost hoped, for Shawna Degrassi's sake, that they were wrong, and this wasn't where she was being held.

It was an odd thought, since the girl would clearly be better off if they found her _now_.

But it didn't come from a rational place.

It was just that JJ knew a thing or two about what it felt like to be bleeding and disoriented and alone on the cold floor of an old barn.

She knew a thing or two about what a cruel, sadistic man could do a person, too.

The idea of those two concepts fused together was nothing short of horrific.

JJ was squinting into the early morning light when Morgan emerged from the barn and gestured wildly to the EMTs that had accompanied them to the scene.

And she knew the girl was there. And hurt.

JJ's mind wasn't quite sure how to process that.

It was her victory. She'd figured it out. She'd be praised left and right. Hotch would give her another talk about becoming an official profiler.

If he only knew.

She stood still for a long while, lost in thought, hanging back by their vehicles, oblivious to the chaos around her, not paying much attention to anything until her own team was making their way back toward her, and the girl was being wheeled past her on a stretcher.

JJ caught a glimpse of the victim's vacant eyes.

And suddenly it all caught up to her.

The fear and the exhaustion and the pressure and _the guilt_.

Her team was approaching. Congratulatory words and smiles on their lips.

And she tried to fight the tears.

She fought like hell.

But she lost the battle.

And as her face crumbled and sobs rose in her throat, all she could do was turn her face away and pray that her legs didn't give out.

And pray that her pride could be recovered, too.

Because everyone she wanted to be strong and capable for was right there, watching her break.

_Everyone_.

…


	4. Chapter 3

_Author's note: Thanks again for the wonderful reviews up to this point. This chapter was more of a struggle than the previous two, and as such I'd appreciate any and all feedback. I'm admittedly taking some liberties with JJ's family/backstory. But until the show tells us more, all a fic writer can really do is extrapolate from what we do know. The further this gets from the realities of the show (ie the team working a case) the harder it is to feel confident about the characterization – but again, I'm sort of extrapolating. I hope it feels right. With that said… they'll be working a rather emotionally charged case soon enough._

_While I'm rambling, as a side note, I'd like to note that I've reworked my outline for this fic a bit, and I'm excited about where it's all going._

_Hope you enjoy! _

**Face**

Chapter Three

…

_It's the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter._

- German entertainer Marlene Dietrich

…

JJ couldn't sleep.

She released a heavy sigh, pressed her face into the less-than-soft fabric of the little couch.

Somewhere in the back of her jumbled mind it occurred to her that Morgan had been calling it a 'settee', lately, and that that was odd.

She wasn't sure it was the correct word for this specific piece of furniture, anyway, but more to the point, she had no idea where _Derek Morgan_ would have picked up that particular term.

It didn't matter, of course.

It was just the kind of odd thought that came to a person when sleep wouldn't.

The point wasn't what the little couch was called, but rather that it had become a better option for her than her own bed.

She lay face-down. On the little couch.

In the round table room. At BAU Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia.

Home base for her team.

Just plain _home_, for her, lately, when they were in town.

Nothing like a federally secured building to make a girl feel reasonably safe.

She shifted restlessly.

And carefully, too.

Because it still hurt. It was still sore. Even two weeks, four days, and twenty-two hours later.

She knew she only had a few hours to try to get some rest. The cleaning crew would be in at five am, and by then she'd have to be back in her own office, claiming to have just arrived to get a ridiculously early start to the work day.

No one seemed to suspect anything. No one knew she'd been using the showers on the fourth floor of the building in the wee hours of the morning. No one questioned the suitcase in her office – the team needed to be ready to take off at a moment's notice, after all.

Hotch had made a joke a week and a half ago, upon finding her already at work one morning when he thought he'd be the first to arrive – _"Do you live here_?"

They'd shared a laugh.

He'd had no idea how close to the truth it was. No sense of how terrified she was to spend the night in her apartment. No notion that she wasn't okay, and hadn't been for a while.

But maybe he was starting to figure some of that out now.

Her mind drifted back to the flight back from Michigan, just a few hours ago.

To how difficult it had been to step onto the plane with the rest of the team after breaking down like that.

How none of them were looking at her, and yet they were all watching her.

She'd considered pretending to fall asleep, and then decided that was a level of pathetic she wasn't willing to sink to just yet.

Reid had approached to talk to her about an hour into the flight, and she'd silently cursed him for it.

He'd been sweet, she had to admit. He'd simply asked how she was doing.

And then Hotch had approached the two of them…

"_I'll give you guys a minute --" Reid tried to say, getting up. _

_Hotch held up his hand, gestured for Reid to sit back down. _

"_I need to speak to you both."_

_JJ exchanged a glance with Reid. _

_He looked like he'd rather be ejected from the plane than become the subject of someone else's worried attention. _

_She had a brief moment of childish satisfaction at that. _

"_I could ask you both, again, together or separately, if something is bothering you," Hotch started, his voice quiet, his tone even. "If maybe you need to take some personal time. If there's anything I can do to help. And you could tell me, again, that you're fine." He paused for just a second. "And nothing would change." He stopped again for a moment, took in a breath. "I'm concerned that I may be losing two of my best people. Two of my favorite people, for that matter. And so I've made a decision." _

"_Hotch --" Reid tried to interrupt him, to fend off whatever was coming. _

_But to no effect. _

"_I've ordered psych evals for you both." _

_JJ spoke up --_

"_I don't need --"_

"_It's not up for debate." _

_Hotch started to get up and move away from them, and then decided to add one last thing: _

"_I truly believe this is for your own good."_

He'd sounded like such a father. (Not that she'd know, JJ reminded herself.)

He'd crossed over to the other side of the plane then, leaving JJ and Reid side by side on the sofa seat.

JJ remembered turning to look at Reid after a moment.

Remembered finding his eyes ice cold.

Like this was a nightmare for him, and it was her fault.

Like Hotch wouldn't have worried about him if he wasn't also concerned about her.

Like he blamed her for his issues _now_, even though he hadn't before.

She had a feeling Reid was done worrying about her and her problems.

Oddly enough, she didn't feel relieved about it, lying there in a dazed state of half-sleep on the little couch that might or might not be accurately called a settee.

She just felt alone.

…

Garcia woke in her little office with a bit of a start.

She was disoriented for just a few seconds, trying to remember where she was and why.

That her door was propped open kick-started her memory.

Morgan had asked her to check in on JJ.

She'd been waiting and watching. JJ had to pass by her office on her way out for the night, and Garcia had been planning to intercept her.

It seemed like a good idea. To grab her when she was leaving, when she couldn't claim she was in the middle of something.

But, apparently, she herself had fallen asleep on the job.

She rubbed her eyes, and stood and stretched.

Half asleep, she wandered out toward the bullpen and found it darkened and empty.

This building was never silent, but it seemed damned close right now.

She decided to glance into JJ's office, just in case, even though her watch told her it was past two-o-clock in the morning, and even JJ had almost certainly headed for home by now.

She found the cluttered office as dark and empty as the rest of the area, and was about to turn back when a shadow of an odd little object caught her eye.

She stepped into the room to take a closer look.

It was the jagged metal of a ring of keys.

By all other appearances, JJ was gone for the night – so why were her keys sitting abandoned on her desk?

Garcia snatched the heavy key ring up, tried to take a closer look even in the darkened room.

JJ carried a mess of keys on any given day. Half of them were probably for some door in this building. One of them had to be the key to her apartment building, another to her apartment, the little one to her mailbox.

But it was the car keys that mattered.

Garcia traced the keyless entry keypad with a gentle, curious finger.

If JJ's car keys were still here, so was she.

Which was very, very strange, since the place was dark and quiet.

Garcia considered the possibility that one of the others had offered JJ a ride home. Morgan had mentioned that she'd been up all night the night before, after all. It was entirely possible she'd been too tired to drive.

But she still would have needed the keys to her apartment.

Not sure if she should be worried or not, not sure where she was going, and not at all convinced that she herself wasn't dreaming, Garcia started making her way back down the hall.

And in the silence and stillness of the eerily empty bullpen, her ears just barely picked up on a quiet sound.

Like someone moving. Like bodies shifting.

She determined the general direction that the barely-there sound had come from, and made her way over toward the round table room.

And it was the most peculiar thing.

JJ was lying there on the little couch.

Face-down, on her stomach. Eyes closed. Shoes kicked off.

Like she was settled in for the night.

"JJ?"

JJ's eyes flew open and darted around, and she fell off the couch with a thud as she tried to back away.

It was all so strange that it never even occurred to Garcia to utter anything along the lines of 'it's just me!' or 'it's okay!'

She just watched and waited, in total confusion, as JJ took in her surroundings and the startled panic in her eyes calmed to a more muted distress.

"What are you doing?" Garcia asked quietly. And cautiously. Because JJ looked something like a cornered animal right now, and it was truly scary.

"I, uh…" JJ started after a moment. She closed her eyes, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. And Garcia didn't have to be a profiler to realize JJ was sleepily putting together a story. "I was… I was up all night. Before. And by the time I, you know, realized, that I'm too tired to be behind the wheel of my car, everyone had already cleared out, and I had some extra clothes in my bag, from the trip, for tomorrow, and so I just figured, for one night, you know…"

JJ nodded and shrugged, and sunk down onto the couch again, avoiding Garcia's eyes.

"What are, um, what are you still doing here?"

Garcia cautiously took a seat next to JJ, turning her body so that she was facing her.

"Derek dropped by my office before he left for the night," Garcia started, and JJ gave her a look that could almost pass for amusement.

"Derek?"

Garcia said nothing, taking in the expression on JJ's face.

She knew JJ was questioning the use of a real name rather than a nickname.

But she wasn't just questioning it. She was trying to pretend all was well. Trying to joke. Maybe even trying to change the subject.

Well, too bad.

"He said to me, and I do believe I quote, 'Your girl lost it today. Might need a girlfriend to lean on.'" Garcia paused, remembering the seriously worried expression that had been written all over Morgan's face. She reached out, tapped the top of JJ's hand with gentle fingers. It had the desired effect – JJ looked up and met her eyes. "So I'm here," Garcia told her quietly. "Feel free to lean."

It was a serious and somewhat emotional invitation. But JJ just forced another smile.

"Do you have any idea how scary it is to see you this serious?" JJ tried to joke. Still making a feeble attempt to avoid it all.

"Do you have any idea how scary it is to see you this jittery?" Garcia countered, undeterred.

And she meant it.

When Morgan had told her about JJ falling apart at a crime scene, she'd had visions of JJ walking out of their lives a la Elle.

Elle had been a coworker for a brief time. There might have been the potential for real friendship, but it had never really amounted to anything.

JJ, however…

JJ was, as Morgan had put it, _her girl_.

"I get that your personal demons are your personal demons," Garcia said carefully. "But you're sleeping at the office and losing it on the job and, and I realize this is going to sound funny, but you don't drink coffee anymore."

JJ turned to face her again. Surprised.

"What does coffee have to do with anything?"

"You've always got a mug in your hands. Except not anymore. And it's a silly little thing, but the devil's in the details, right?"

"You want me to go get some coffee? Would that make you feel better?" JJ asked. Sarcastic.

"No. I want you to tell me that when you really need help, you're not going to have too much pride to ask for it."

JJ said nothing for a moment. Thinking. Considering.

And when she spoke, it seemed to Garcia she was finally being sincere.

"It's not about pride," JJ admitted. But instead of further confiding anything personal, she added: "If it makes you feel any better, Hotch is trying to force me into a psych eval."

"Maybe that's a good thing."

"It's not good or bad or anything else, 'cause I'm not going," JJ informed her.

Garcia shook her head a little bit. Quietly incredulous.

"Jayje, you do realize how completely and totally unlike you it is to defy Hotch?"

"Well like I told Reid, maybe I'm sick of being 'like me'."

JJ stood up and wandered a few steps away, absentmindedly pulling pushpins out of the board on the wall, and then jabbing them back in.

Garcia stayed put.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You know how people say karma's a bitch?" JJ asked. She jabbed another pushpin onto the board before continuing. "It's not a bitch. It's a joke." She turned back to face Garcia. Worn out. Defeated. And yet a little bit wild-eyed. "You know, I did everything right. I'm so sick of doing everything right. I was the good student, the good athlete, the girl who didn't lie or cheat or do drugs or smoke. I was the good niece, and I would have been the good daughter, too, if I'd had the chance. And I'm a good aunt. I'm still that. I was this ultra-law-abiding citizen who was supposed to be helping to save the world from monsters…" She paused. For a long moment, it seemed she wasn't going to continue. "And it doesn't count for anything," she finally said. "It doesn't do me any good."

Garcia stood up and took a few steps toward her, but JJ just took another step back, keeping her distance.

"It's not like I didn't know that bad things happened to good people," JJ all but mumbled, almost to herself. "I know that. In this job, and… I mean, look at Reid --"

"Let's not look at Reid, okay? Let's look at you," Garcia told her, moving toward her again.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because I can't."

"Why?"

"Because _I can't_," JJ insisted vehemently.

Garcia could almost _see_ the emotional walls going up and being fortified, and so she decided to backtrack.

"Let's just take this down a notch, okay? You can trust me," she offered softly. "I know I can be a goof, but I've also got some pretty good shoulders to cry on."

"It's not about trust," JJ insisted, but her tone was less combative now.

Garcia just looked at her for a moment.

Feeling that the moment was _so surreal_.

Here they were, at work in the middle of the night, in the dark, trying to make a real conversation out of vague concepts, because JJ refused to get into specifics.

And somehow, for once, of the two of them, JJ wasn't the stable one.

The only thing Garcia knew for sure was that she didn't want JJ to see her as a threat.

She knew enough about the human mind to know that wasn't the way to handle this.

"I'm gonna keep this simple, okay?" Garcia suggested. "You lie down, get some sleep. I'll go home, get some sleep. Tomorrow I show up bright and early, and we get some breakfast before we get started, and you can talk to me as vaguely and with as many metaphors as you please. And we'll start small. You can tell me why you don't drink coffee anymore."

Garcia smiled a disarming little smile.

JJ looked stunned that she was backing off.

She somehow seemed grateful and saddened all at once, standing there.

Looking pale even in the dim light.

Looking ready to collapse.

Garcia reached out and pulled her into a hug.

Hugging was something she was good at.

She always gave people a really good squeeze, always hugged like she meant it.

Maybe it was the warm embrace that made JJ offer up a little tidbit of almost incoherent information.

Maybe it was just that Garcia was not, at the present moment, a threat to her secret.

Or maybe JJ just didn't know what she was saying anymore.

"I liked it almost too hot," JJ murmured. "Almost scalding."

Garcia leaned back to look at her face again.

"Guess that's a start. You're going to be here when I get back tomorrow morning, right?"

"I'm not going anywhere."

JJ sounded sure of that.

And Garcia was beginning to feel too tired to think straight, so she forced her heavy feet to head for the door.

"Get some sleep," she called out as she left.

But when she'd stepped onto the elevator on her way out, she could see through the closing doors that JJ was up and about, and seemingly headed back to her office.

Garcia sighed to herself. Wondering if maybe she should talk to Morgan, and have him go to Hotch or Gideon about this.

She'd give him a call in the morning. And let him decide.

…

_There has to be a difference_, Reid thought to himself, staring down at the syringe carefully laid out in front of him, next to the little vial of forbidden liquid.

There _had to be_ a difference between a user and an addict.

Just like there had to be a difference between the eccentric and the insane.

He needed those distinctions.

He clung to them.

He wasn't sweating or shaking. That had to count for something, didn't it?

He didn't _need a fix_.

He wasn't a junkie.

He was still Supervisory Special Agent Spencer Reid.

At least until the psychiatric evaluation took that away from him.

And he was fairly certain it would.

The psychologist would see through him.

Just like Gideon saw through him.

Except the psychologist would have to say so out loud.

Hotch would get the 'psychological status report', and then everything would change.

He wasn't really sure if he blamed JJ or not.

Wasn't really sure if he blamed Hotch or not.

He just knew that this was going to damage his career. If not destroy it altogether.

And really, what else did he have?

The work and the team.

That was his life.

And if that was being ripped away from him, didn't he _deserve_ to fall into a chemically-induced oblivion tonight?

Something in the back of his mind called out that that was twistic logic.

After all, the drugs were half the problem.

He ignored that little voice.

Reminded himself that he wasn't an addict.

Just a user.

And he reached for the vial and the syringe.

He'd just brought the two together when a knock on his door startled him, and he almost dropped the damn things.

He listened intently, wondering if he'd somehow imagined it.

It was the middle of the night, after all.

And he very rarely had visitors.

He certainly wasn't expecting anyone tonight.

Maybe the college kids down the hall were too drunk to find their own door, he thought.

The knock sounded again, and he sat absolutely still, and held his breath, willing whoever it was to just go away.

Just leave him alone.

Just let him have this moment…

He sat there silently for well over a minute, staring blindly at his surroundings, in the barely decorated living area of his little apartment.

The only true decorations had been gifts.

An artist's rendering of the Las Vegas strip by night hung on one wall. A tasteful fake plant sat on one end table. A ceramic bust of Einstein on another.

The first two were from JJ. The third was from Morgan, and Reid had never been quite sure if it was supposed to be a gag gift or not.

He found himself staring at Einstein's image. He had the absurd thought that the little voice in his head was Einstein's.

After all, if Reid's memory served him – and it always did - it was Einstein who had said:

"_We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."_

To hell with him.

Reid had half a mind to smash the stupid thing.

And to deal with whoever persisted in knocking on his door, too.

He had the sense to stick the needle and accompanying drug in a drawer before making his way over to the door.

He expected his eternally drunken young neighbours to be on the other side.

And so when he opened the door and found JJ standing there, he didn't immediately know what to say.

She looked like hell. And, oddly enough, she clutched a file folder marked with the FBI insignia in one hand.

It was the trembling pages that caught his eyes.

"You're shaking," he noted.

She didn't bother to deny it.

"I need you to let me in," she told him, her tone somehow both carefully even and lined with a slight tremor.

"It's the middle of the night," he pointed out, and although he didn't mean it as a refusal, she seemed to take it that way.

"I know it's late, and I know you're mad at me --"

"I'm not -- I'm just --"

"I just need to not talk about this in the hallway. Please. If it helps, it's partly a work thing." Emotion overcame her then, pursing her lips and filling her eyes. "It's a work thing now," she all but whispered, looking away from him, and he held his door open for her.

"I don't understand," he told her, when she'd stepped inside.

"I was… I couldn't sleep, and I… I thought maybe if I just went into my office and tried to focus on work… I thought work would be a good distraction…"

She shook her head, warding off a full onslaught of tears.

"I need to show you something," she said quietly, when she'd regained a tenuous control. "I don't have a choice anymore. This came across my desk…" She held up the file with a shaky hand.

He tried to take it from her, but she pulled it back.

"The Bureau can protect people, right?" she asked him. Hopefully. Desperately. She sounded almost child-like. "That we fail all the time, that it ends up being an inside job and people die, that's just a trick of the mind, right? I just remember those times more, don't I?"

He nodded slowly.

"We can put you in a safehouse, you know that."

"It's not me," she said quickly. "It's not just me."

"I'm sure Hotch could arrange --"

"How many people can they protect at once? There's only so much manpower. Only so many safehouses."

He stared at her, wondering if the scope of whatever this was extended far beyond what he would have thought.

"Until you tell me what's going on, I can't make any promises," he told her honestly.

She took a step toward him. Beginning to lose the battle with her tears.

"He has access to _everyone I know_," she nearly whispered. "He has my PDA. Every name, every address. He takes pictures, cell phone pictures, of my niece and nephew. Sends them to me."

She released a breath in a tortured sigh. And he wanted to cry for her.

"We'll keep them safe," he promised quietly.

"You put a protective detail on them, and he knows I talked," JJ told him. "And then he moves on down the list. _Everyone I know_…"

He didn't have the words to calm her fears.

Whoever this was, whatever he'd done that he needed JJ to be silent about…

His plan was rather ingenious.

There was no way the Bureau could put that many people under their protection.

It just wasn't feasible.

JJ clearly knew that, and he couldn't, in good conscience, tell her that she was wrong.

And yet, somehow, he had to get her to hand over that file.

"I can help you, okay? Genius Dr. Reid, remember?" he said, trying to keep his tone relatively light. "We'll figure something out. Together. Two heads better than one, right?"

He reached for the file again, and she looked ready to hand it over.

But then she pulled it back again.

"You have to understand…" she pleaded with him. "I didn't want him to hurt anyone else… I knew he would, and it's been eating me up inside… every time I hear a story on the news, that could be his work, I just… but I couldn't…"

He caught her gaze, and nodded meaningfully.

"I understand," he promised her.

He wrapped his hand around hers – the one that clutched the file folder. Ready to take it away from her.

"I understand," he told her again.

She was gripping the file so hard her knuckles had gone white.

But he managed to gently pry it from her fingers.

He sat down on the couch, the folder in his lap.

She stood absolutely still, standing over him, drawing in ragged breath after ragged breath, her trembling hands hanging at her sides.

"You're doing the right thing," he assured her. It was the only comfort he had to offer.

He flipped open the cover and scanned the first page.

He read as quickly as ever at first, and then slowed down.

His brain might be able to handle twenty thousand words per minute.

But his heart, or whatever it was in him that handled emotion, could only take so much.

It started with a police report. A _local_ police report.

And then another report, a second incident.

There were only two reported incidents to date, but the unique, undeniably ritualistic nature of the crimes put them squarely in BAU territory.

It was the mention of stolen address books that got to him. Slowed him down.

Told him that JJ wasn't just some intimidated witness.

_She was one of the victims. _

He looked up and found her gaze locked on the wall above his head, her teeth clenched, her hands now balled into fists.

Like it took everything in her to let him do this.

He read on from that point at a speed more familiar to a person of average intelligence.

Thinking that just reading the details was going to haunt him.

Wondering, then, what the hell the actual experience must have done to her.

When he'd read through to the last word of the last page, he closed the folder and stood to face her.

There were no words.

He couldn't ask the questions he needed to ask. To confirm.

And so he circled around behind her.

And he moved so very deliberately slowly.

Giving her a chance to stop him if she wanted to.

But she didn't stop him.

She didn't even move.

She was almost painfully still as he reached out to brush her hair from her neck.

And he saw what he knew he'd see.

The angry red skin there, the image she'd been branded with.

For a second he thought he might be sick.

For more than a second he wanted to scream.

For her sake, for his.

For how harsh the world had been to them both lately.

He had the fleeting, ridiculous thought that he could comfort her with Dilaudid.

That he had enough for both of them.

But he shoved the thought away.

And he stepped around her, until he was facing her, and he could look her in the eye.

Her eyes were a mess of emotion.

She had that look that said there was no coming back from this.

That her world would forever be a little bit colder, and there was just no making sense of it.

He'd seen that look in the mirror.

And the sight of it in someone else's eyes – in _her_ eyes – made him do something that he didn't normally do.

He reached out for her. Wrapped his arms around her so gently that he barely touched her at first.

He held her in a loose, awkward embrace.

Thinking that all he had to offer was a kind of acute understanding.

Thinking about how bad it would have been if she had arrived a few mere minutes later.

Thinking that he wasn't strong enough to be the one to figure out their next move.

He could stand with her, holding her like this, for as long as she needed him to.

But he couldn't handle the horrors of this world anymore.

His mind couldn't process this on a rational level, couldn't put together the profile.

Maybe tomorrow morning he'd be able to do that.

But not tonight.

She needed a clear head to help her handle this.

And so he told her the only thing he was sure of.

"JJ… We need to call Hotch."

…


	5. Chapter 4

_Author's note: Thank you again for the fantastic reviews. It's incredibly encouraging. _

_I warn you now, this chapter is long, and this chapter is dark. But I'd like to think that, like the show, it's about a lot more than shock factor and sympathy. Keep in mind what's come before, and where Reid and JJ end up at the end of the chapter. The story is really about the two of them, what they've been through and what that will mean for them together and separately._

_With that said – please, give it a chance, and feel free to review with the good, the bad and the ugly. _

**Face**

Chapter Four

…

_The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next._

- American journalist Mignon McLaughlin

…

"What do you remember after that?"

She hesitated.

Every word she uttered was reluctant.

"Pain."

"Where?"

"My neck. The back of my neck."

"Did you know he was burning you?"

She hesitated again. Nodded haltingly.

"I couldn't see anything. But it was… that kind of pain. Searing."

Hotch nodded. For lack of anything else to say or do.

"And then what happened?"

She swallowed hard.

"He did it again."

"Where?"

"My back. My lower back."

"And then?"

"Again." Her eyes were focused on an arbitrary distant point somewhere above his head. Her voice caught ever-so-slightly when she added: "And again."

"Did he say anything?"

She didn't seem to have heard the question. Instead of answering, she murmured:

"You know, you'd think a gag wouldn't really work. That you'd still be able to scream loud enough." She broke off. Stared at nothing. Silent for a moment. Added: "I used to think that."

She was almost talking to herself.

Hotch turned his gaze from her bloodshot eyes to Reid's face.

Reid, who had met him at the door like a gatekeeper. Or maybe a bodyguard. To warn him. That she was hanging on by a thread. That he would have to be careful.

Reid, who was now sitting there next to her. Listening quietly. Looking almost as destroyed as she did.

Whatever shred of faith in humanity he might have been clinging to was long gone now.

"JJ, what happened next?" Hotch asked. His voice quiet. His tone gentle, almost like the one reserved for his son at bedtime.

He'd read the reports. And he thought he knew what he was asking her to say.

She opened her mouth to answer.

Then closed it again.

Pressed her lips together hard. Shook her head a little. Gulped in an audible breath.

It was clear as day that she didn't trust herself to speak without breaking.

"JJ --"

"Turned the music off," she spit out. "Freed my hands."

"And…?" Hotch prompted.

"And nothing," she said, finally meeting his eyes. Searching his face for a reaction. Her voice grew stronger as she told him: "He underestimated me. I fought back. Made it to the washroom, locked myself inside. Got the gag off, would have screamed for help if he hadn't started his threats right then."

Hotch stared at her. Startled.

"You were able to get away from him?"

"Yes."

Hotch looked over at Reid, and realized that this wasn't news to him.

Then he looked back at JJ.

And realized he didn't believe her.

…

It had already been a long and trying day.

And it was not yet even nine-o-clock in the morning.

Aaron Hotchner sat alone in his office. Vaguely wondering if it now fell to him to put together a multimedia presentation of the case. And then deciding that it didn't matter.

No one would care that the case wasn't presented to them with the usual efficiency.

No one would even notice.

They'd be too busy trying to adjust to the notion that _it was happening again_.

One more time, it was _personal_.

Their dark little world seemed determined to expose them to every brand of the unique hell that was a personal investment in a horrific case.

It was stressful - painful, even – to work a case where the word 'unsub' was code for something more personal.

Elle's shooter. Reid's kidnapper. He-who-framed-Derek.

And now this.

JJ's…

There wasn't even really a word.

JJ's attacker, perhaps. But that word seemed so… inadequate.

And this was different in another way, too.

With the other three incidents, there had been a kind of distance.

Elle had been in surgery, unconscious.

Reid, despite the video feed, hadn't been present, either.

And Derek… well, Derek had been a friend whose name needed to be cleared.

It was something else entirely to sit JJ down, knowing the bare facts of what she'd been through, and ask her to tell her story.

It was something else entirely to know that they would have to go to her, again and again, and ask her to remember. To call up one detail or another of what had been done to her.

For the sake of the case.

They had her front and center _now_. During the quest to find the unsub. Not after the fact.

She was their greatest resource.

This was going to be different. And difficult.

A knock at the door startled Hotch out of his somber thoughts, and he straightened himself in his chair, waving Reid inside.

"How's she doing?"

"Scared to death she's handled this wrong and someone's going to die because of it," Reid told him matter-of-factly.

"We've already got a team on her aunt's house. The kids are protected."

"It's everyone else in her life she's worried about."

Hotch sighed, and let a moment pass in silence.

And then he went ahead and asked a question that had been weighing on his mind all morning.

"Do you believe her?"

Reid gaped at him. Shocked. Offended on JJ's behalf.

"How can you -- Why would you --"

Hotch held up both hands, gesturing for Reid to relax.

"I don't mean the whole of it," Hotch assured him. "But the fact of the matter is… the other two women were raped. JJ insists that she wasn't. And I have to wonder... if maybe that wouldn't be her story -- be what she could handle telling us -- regardless of the reality."

Reid shifted his weight, and let his eyes fall to his shoes.

The thought had crossed his mind as well, from the moment JJ had started insisting to him that it had been different for her than for the others, that she'd been able to fight her attacker off.

It seemed to him that the lady doth protest too much.

And yet --

"I believe her," Reid said quietly, looking up at Hotch again.

"For what reasons?" Hotch asked, just as quietly. Looking miserable.

"Because, JJ, she's… she's had more self defense training than the average woman. And because, she's really stronger than you'd think." Reid paused. Knowing he had to admit the reasoning that had the most impact on his conclusion. "And because I want to," he finished. Looking sad and sheepish at the same time.

Hotch didn't speak, or nod, or shake his head to disagree.

His eyes seemed to lose their focus for just a second or two, and then he looked over at Reid, his face full of understanding.

"We need to look beyond what we want to believe," Hotch noted. "Otherwise we have no business working this case."

Reid took in a long, slow deep breath, nodding to himself.

"Is JJ going to be at the briefing with the team?" he asked. Curious and concerned.

"No," Hotch told him. "She's as attached to her privacy as the rest of us. Knowing we're in there talking about her is one thing. To have her sit there and listen to it… far be it for me to decide this for her, but that would be nothing short of cruel."

"Did you say that to her?"

"No. She would have thought I was saying she couldn't handle it. With JJ, that's just this side of a dare."

Reid nodded. Thinking that Hotch knew her well.

"So what did you tell her?"

"That she shouldn't be there since she can't officially work the case. I wrote it off as a matter of conflict of interest. She didn't question it." Hotch paused, met Reid's gaze with his own. "I think she was relieved," he confided.

Reid looked contemplative as that sunk in, and then he just nodded, and tipped his head toward the door, as if to say he was going to go.

He turned and wandered out, leaving Hotch alone again with his disheartening thoughts.

He'd sent JJ back to her own office, and warned her that they would need her later. That the others would surely have questions for her.

He dreaded those impending moments.

Hated the thought of having to pull answers out of her.

Seeing her fight to keep up an odd façade of something calm and controlled.

Knowing all too well that she was dying on the inside.

There had been far too much of that already, just this morning.

He dreaded those moments even more than he dreaded the briefing he was about to conduct.

…

"Here? In this room?" Morgan asked, as if he'd heard Garcia wrong.

"Here. In this room." Garcia confirmed it for him, nodding. "Curled up on the couch. Like she had no intention of leaving any time soon."

Morgan's eyes darkened as he took that in and thought it over, and then he pulled out a chair from the round table and let himself drop into it.

"That's not good," he finally said after a moment.

"Hence my speaking up."

She sat down in the chair next to him, and caught his eye.

"I'm worried," she announced. "Truly."

"You should be," he noted. "If she's sleeping here, she's decided this place is a better option than her place, than a hotel, than a friend's place. She'd rather sleep in a federal office and get by on almost no rest. Why?" He spoke to her the way he spoke to a partner on a case, leading her to a conclusion he'd already come to himself.

She just looked at him. Afraid to know the answer.

"Because it's secure," he filled in. "It's safe. Nobody gets in here who's not supposed to be in here."

Before Garcia could react to that, Gideon treaded purposefully into the room.

"Morning." It was an automatic, mechanical greeting.

"Gideon, we have a problem," Morgan said immediately, getting up from his seat. Garcia threw him an uncertain look, but he just returned her look with one of his own -- one that said he had to do this -- and continued. "JJ's been sleeping here. Overnight. Quite possibly for a good long while now."

Gideon's eyes narrowed. Baffled.

"What?"

"We don't actually know that it's been a while --" Garcia tried to point out.

"What we do know is that she felt the need to stay here last night," Morgan said definitively, cutting her off.

Gideon just shook his head, perplexed.

"What's she hiding from?"

Morgan shrugged.

"I don't know. But someone needs to go to her, ask her straight out --"

He broke off as Hotch and Reid entered the room. Hotch looking _too_ composed, Reid looking pensive.

"Hotch, I need to get clear with you on something," Morgan started. "About JJ."

Hotch just looked at him for a moment, as if wondering something.

Then he responded:

"You're in good company."

"What's that mean?" Morgan asked.

"I need to speak to you. About JJ. All of you. Where's Prentiss?"

Emily came flying into the room just in time to catch the last of Hotch's words.

"Here. I apologize. Aren't we missing someone?"

"JJ can't be here today," Hotch said, with just the slightest note of something cryptic in his tone.

He looked the others over, trying to find the words to start.

They all seemed to have varying degrees of awareness.

Varying degrees of concern.

"As of today we're dealing with a local unsub," Hotch began, his tone carefully expressionless. "He's preying on women. In our own city." He paused. Hesitating only on the inside. "Per JJ, he's clinical. Detached. Married to his ritual. Completely unaffected by human suffering."

The unsettled faces in front of him exchanged glances.

Dread.

Affirmation.

Except for Gideon, whose inexplicably knowing gaze remained locked on the floor.

And Prentiss, who hadn't quite clued in. She spoke up:

"JJ got all that from a local police file? I mean, granted, for not being a real profiler, she's a heck of a profiler, but…" She let her voice trail off. "I missed something?" she half asked and half stated, sensing something. Noting the silent, still, troubled expressions surrounding her.

Hotch drew in a slow, deep breath.

"Just over two weeks ago, JJ was assaulted at home. By an intruder we believe is our unsub. She has stated that – unlike his other victims – she was not raped. She was able to defend herself. The unsub stayed in contact, threatening her niece and nephew. Among others. And as such, she didn't feel she could come forward. Until the case landed in her lap. Forcing her hand."

Hotch paused for a moment. Satisfied that he'd said enough to move on to presenting the case, such as it was.

They'd needed to know that much off the top.

For whatever peace of mind it would allow as he continued.

He tried to report the rest -- the facts as he could remember them -- the way that he would in any other case.

But somehow every word came out just a touch slower, just a touch softer.

"The first victim, Marlene Hoffert, is a local television news reporter. The second, Amanda Minson, the host of a small local cooking show. We worked a local case in which JJ held two separate press conferences just prior to her attack. The Finn case. All three women were on local television in one context or another."

He paused. Glanced at the notes in the folder in his hands more for show than anything else, taking a second to gather his thoughts.

"There are quite likely more victims," he continued. "In each case, the unsub stole an address book or personal digital assistant, giving him ample resources to make quite effective threats. There's no protecting an entire address book full of people. To be honest, I'm surprised we have even three women willing to come forward."

He took in another deep breath.

This was the hard part.

"These women have no warning whatsoever. They wake to find him in their bedrooms. Before they even know what's happening, he's got them handcuffed and gagged. He's brought a CD along, and he plays a single song repeatedly: some particular recording of an old tune called 'You Belong to Me'."

He stopped briefly again. Feeling a little bit sick.

"He heats a crude metallic instument of some kind," he continued after a moment. "His victims are restrained face-down on the bed at this point. Generally not able to see what he's doing. But at least one of the victims believes he used the flame of a simple dollar store lighter. He burns them in such a way that they're branded with an image -- something like a two, or an 'N', or a 'Z'. Four times. The back of the neck, the small of the back, the back of both knees. When he's finished, he turns off the music. It's at this point that he becomes less consistent. With Marlene Hoffert, he freed her hands, and proceeded to rape her. With Amanda Minson, he kept her restrained during the rape." He paused, looked from one sickened face to another. "He freed JJ's hands. It was dark, and I'd imagine she was pretty panicked, and she's not entirely sure what happened, beyond the fact that she struck out and made contact and was able to slip by him while he recovered."

Finished with the facts, Hotch took a seat with the others at the table.

No one said anything for a long moment.

Gideon was the first to return to an entirely professional state of mind.

"He's branding them in places where they can hide it. He's making them his, keeping it his little secret."

"Getting off on that secret," Morgan added. "Stuck on the idea these women are walking around the city wearing his mark, and no one knows it but him."

"But why the physical fight?" Prentiss questioned. "If he's about control, ownership, branding… if the suffering means nothing to him for better or for worse… Why free their hands and invite physical struggle?"

"Why does that part vary from victim to victim," Gideon pointed out, without phrasing it as a real question.

"He's smart," Reid offered quietly. "He's turned fear into a pretty effective tool. Moreso than anyone else I can remember studying. When JJ came to me wanting to know how to protect every single person she knows… I didn't know what to tell her."

They all fell silent for a moment. Then Morgan spoke up:

"How many more victims could there possibly be in this town? This ain't L.A.. If he's looking for women he sees on _local_ television? He doesn't have a lot of options."

"It's possible he's not staying as local as it seems," Hotch noted. "The police did what they could in terms of searching for similar cases outside their jurisdiction, but I'm sure Garcia can do more."

Garcia's head snapped up at the mention of her name. Pulled from a dark trance.

She nodded after a moment.

"Yes Sir."

"He may be staying local because he can spot a woman on a show that gives away a location," Gideon suggested. "The local news building, local television station… even this building. The screen gives him a shot of her face, an idea of where she works. He gathers the location details, follows her home."

"Sir?" Garcia spoke up timidly. Knowing she had nothing to offer for the profile, but unable to hold back asking what she wanted to know. "What happened? After… after she 'slipped away', after she ran from him… how did she…?"

"She locked herself in the washroom," Reid spoke up, looking over at Garcia briefly, then fixing his gaze on the surface of the table. "She said she was going to scream, to call out, but… he was quick. Smart, like I said. He spoke to her through the door. Reading out names and numbers and addresses from her PDA. Subtle but effective threats."

"This guy had her password?" Morgan asked, surprised.

"He didn't need one," Reid answered him. "JJ… she wasn't the type to worry too much about safeguarding her personal information."

He realized he was speaking in the past tense just after he'd said it.

And it felt unfortunately accurate to him.

"You said he threatened her family?" Gideon asked.

"She has a young niece, a younger nephew," Hotch told him. "Natalie and Noah. The unsub has taken cell phone pictures of both, and sent them to her."

"Did he maintain contact with the other two victims?"

"No," Hotch answered him. "Not according to the police files. But JJ had no way of knowing that. She truly believes this man may be keeping her under surveillance of some kind."

"She's different for him than the others," Reid told them all, getting back to Gideon's point.

"Because she's in law enforcement, maybe?" Prentiss suggested. "He feels it's quite a coup?"

"Possible," Morgan allowed. "But more likely, it's that she's the one that got away."

Hotch sighed heavily, and looked over at Gideon.

"There are no crime scenes at this point. I'm open to suggestions as to where to start with this one."

"Is JJ here?" Gideon responded with a question.

"In her office. I warned her that you would all likely have questions for her."

"I'd like to see the image. The marks." Gideon, for once, sounded like he knew he was making a request rather than stating a choice.

"I'm not going to put her under a microscope in a room full of people," Hotch told him, exerting his influence, leaving no room for debate. "There are photos of the burns on the other two women in the police files. I haven't had a chance to get any copies made, but we --"

"We need to see what he did to every one of his victims," Gideon told him, as if it was obvious. "Even if only for comparison's sake."

Hotch considered it silently for a quick moment, and determined that Gideon was right.

"Prentiss?"

"Sir?"

"You'll go to JJ. Take photos."

Prentiss blinked back at him. Startled. Unsettled.

Then she managed a compliant nod.

"Yes Sir."

…

JJ's office door was always open.

She realized that now, more than ever before, slouched at her desk with the door, for once, firmly closed.

It looked so odd.

But she needed that physical barrier today. Needed to be alone.

Needed to sit there unseen while she pulled herself together and wondered how she could have been so clueless.

She'd always prided herself on her empathy. Her ability to understand what the victims were going through. She'd felt so sure she knew what she was doing, what she was asking, when she tried to draw out the intimate details of a traumatic incident.

But she hadn't understood. Hadn't even come close.

It was like having a raw nerve exposed.

And that the poking and prodding was well-intentioned did nothing to ease the pain.

She remembered the interview she'd done with Polly Homefeldt. Remembered having to pull her out of a stupor.

JJ understood that, now, too. The desire to just shut down entirely, because to silently retreat into nothingness would be so much easier.

Of course, the dynamic had been a little bit different between herself and Hotch.

There was a familiarity between them that was hard to take.

It brought with it an inherent resistance to vulnerability, a need to keep her composure.

A need to keep just a few of the monsters in her mind hidden away.

A knock at the door sparked an odd little jolt of something like fear in her.

Not because she thought _he_ was out there.

Just because she wasn't sure she was ready for another interrogation.

No matter how gentle.

She opened her mouth to call out to whoever was about to intrude on her solitude, to tell him or her to come in.

But she couldn't quite make herself say those words, and instead stood slowly and made her way over to the door.

When she opened the door and found Emily on the other side, she made herself a barrier between the hallway and her office.

"Hi," Emily said softly, sounding a little uncertain.

"Hi," JJ returned.

"I'm… sorry, JJ," Emily offered quietly. Sympathetic. "I'm really --"

"Let's not… uh… we really don't need to do any of that, okay?"

Emily nodded. Automatically agreeable.

"They're still in there?" JJ asked, still blocking the door, glancing down the hall.

"Yes."

JJ eyed the small digital camera in Emily's hand warily.

"Gideon," Emily told her. "He wants to take a look at… at the burns. Hotch thought this would be the easiest way."

JJ said nothing. But when she looked up after a moment, there was a reluctant, resigned acceptance in her eyes.

And a moment later she opened her door wider, allowing Emily entry.

Emily stepped inside and looked around the room. Feeling a bit awkward.

"Okay…" Emily started, trying to sound reasonably casual and entirely in control. "Why, don't, uh… why don't you sit, and I'll…" Emily held up the camera.

JJ stayed where she was, holding Emily's gaze, just long enough for it to be clear that _she. hated. this. _

She looked painfully vulnerable as she lowered herself into her desk chair and reached behind her to lift her hair off of her neck.

Emily tried not to react to the sight of the burn.

It seemed to her that time had done little to heal this particular wound.

She had to ask –

"Have you seen a doctor, JJ?"

It took JJ a second to respond.

"I caved on the second day. Went to a clinic. Disinfectant, painkillers."

She didn't offer up anything else, and so Emily just flicked on her camera and snapped a picture, feeling like an idiot when she was startled by the flash.

"Hotch said the next was your back," Emily prompted after a second, and JJ pushed herself up from the chair.

For a second they were eye-to-eye, and Emily took the opportunity to speak up.

"I can't quite kick this feeling that I should have known," she admitted. "Everyone else in that room seemed to know, and, I… I had some idea that something was wrong, obviously, but I never thought… I had no idea. And that bothers me, because I like to think that you and I… well, that you're where I fit best into the team. That we were becoming… some variation on the theme of good friends."

JJ looked so tired and worn out that Emily immediately thought that she shouldn't have said anything.

At least she hadn't uttered her ever-present, multi-situational fear – that Elle would have done better. Known better. Handled herself better.

Emily found herself backtracking.

"You know what, this probably isn't the time for me to --"

"The only person I went to with this was Reid," JJ told her. And a second later, she added: "For whatever it's worth… if he hadn't been home, I probably would have thought about calling you."

Prentiss took a moment to let that sink in, stifling a little smile.

It was worth a hell of a lot.

…

That remaining in her office felt like a cowardly thing to do made JJ return with Prentiss to the conference room.

Just about everyone did a double take when they saw her.

Garcia approached her immediately and wrapped her up in a hug, and Morgan looked like he just might be planning to do the same.

Sweet though it was, under these circumstances JJ couldn't stand it.

She pulled herself out of Garcia's grasp, and did her best to put on a mask of something like professionalism.

"We're on this guy's tail," Morgan offered. Trying to be supportive.

JJ managed an appreciative little smile and nod.

Prentiss discreetly handed a small digital memory card to Garcia.

Understanding immediately, Garcia quietly slipped out to get the pictures printed.

JJ gestured to Garcia's disappearing form.

"Is she going to work on tracing the cell phone signal that sent me the pictures?"

"She is," Hotch assured her. "We've got all the angles covered. Try not to get hung up on the details. You really can't work this case."

"Is the Director even going to let the rest of you work this? Shouldn't this go to another team?"

"Would you want it to?" Hotch asked her, quite seriously, sounding a little bit surprised.

She thought it over for a moment.

It might be less emotionally taxing to deal with people she didn't know or care about.

But…

"You guys are the best at what you do," she decided. "I trust you."

"Then let us do what we do."

JJ nodded, looking around the room, drawing in a deep breath.

"What's the plan if we need to deal with the media?" Morgan asked, curious.

"No media," JJ said quickly. "The only media related effort in this is to keep them in the dark."

She spoke emphatically, with more authority than any of them had ever heard from her.

Gideon caught her eye.

"You know that these other two women, who reported the incidents to the police… their families have not been harmed in any way."

"Forgive me if that isn't enough for me to accept that he's bluffing," JJ told him, rather sharply. Then she softened, as if realizing who she was talking to. "He didn't stay in contact with any of the other women, either. And it's possible he doesn't even know that they've talked. But if we try to go public with this…" She broke off for a moment, and Gideon didn't miss the fear flashing in her eyes. "Then all bets are off," she finished.

Gideon said nothing. Backing off, at least for the moment.

As Morgan and JJ and Prentiss began debating the pros and cons of calling to warn those whose names were in JJ's PDA, Hotch pulled Reid aside.

"I've arranged a safehouse for JJ," Hotch told him, when they'd moved out into the hallway. "And I've hand-picked agents I trust to stay with her."

"Good," Reid said, a little confused as to why Hotch was singling him out with this knowledge.

"I want you among them," Hotch revealed.

Surprise registered on Reid's face.

"I should be working this case. Here. With the rest of you," he protested.

"I don't think that's the --"

"You don't trust me to work this?" Reid asked, looking a little hurt. "Is this about whatever made you order the psych eval? Because I --"

"This is about the fact that JJ came to _you_," Hotch told him quietly. "I can put experienced agents who _I_ trust at the doors of the house. But I want someone _JJ_ trusts in there, as well."

Reid looked mildly chastened.

"Okay."

"Good."

"And I'm still on the case?"

"You're still on the case," Hotch confirmed for him.

Hotch turned to head back into the conference room, and Reid called out to stop him.

"Hotch?"

Hotch turned back.

"If I can get through _this_ case, with flying colors, if I help find this guy, and all goes well… will you think about cancelling the psych eval?"

For a long moment Reid couldn't read the look on Hotch's face.

"No promises," Hotch said simply.

But it was enough to give Reid a little bit of hope.

When they stepped back into the conference room, JJ was heatedly pleading her case.

"You're in there!" she all but yelled at Morgan. "You, Reid, Emily, Garcia, Gideon, Hotch. Home numbers, addresses. And you're on speed dial! Wouldn't you want to be warned?"

"JJ, I hear you," Morgan soothed. "I get what you're saying. But we call all these people and tell them there's some chance this guy could pick them out of a couple hundred names and follow through with his threats… all we accomplish is scaring a whole lot of innocent people, and maybe even making them act out so that he takes notice, realizes you talked."

He had a point.

Hit hard by that, JJ pulled out a chair from the table and sunk into it.

Completely drained.

Hotch gestured for Morgan to vacate the chair he was sitting in across from her, and when Morgan got up and wandered over to stand against the wall with Gideon, Hotch took his place.

"I have a safehouse arranged," he informed JJ. "For you, for tonight, and for however long it's necessary after that. Every single person who knows where you'll be is someone I trust implicitly. And, for the record, I myself chose the agents we have keeping an eye on your family, as well."

Hotch kept talking, giving her details. But across the room, Gideon wasn't listening.

He was just watching. Taking in the look on JJ's weary face.

"'No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another,'" he murmured, mostly to himself.

"What?" Morgan asked, from beside him.

"Charles Dickens." Gideon offered up the source of the quote, then made his way over to speak to JJ.

"I want you to listen to me and really hear this," Gideon instructed her, in a soft tone of voice that seemed to be uniquely his. "This is a case now. A case that you are not working. _We_ will do everything we can. To find the unsub. To protect the innocents. _We_ will make any necessary decisions. It's a federal matter now. This is _not_… on _your_ shoulders… _anymore_."

He held her gaze for a long moment, until tears filled her eyes and she looked away.

Hotch gestured for Reid to come with him, and placed a gentle hand on JJ's arm until she looked up and met his eyes.

"Let's go."

…

By the time Hotch returned from settling his two youngest agents in a safehouse, night had fallen.

Morgan and Prentiss were still in the conference room, studying photos, tossing around ideas, making plans to interview the other two known victims.

Garcia had returned to her own office.

And Gideon, to his.

Hotch found him there, seated at his desk, and took the seat across from him.

They were both silent for a moment before Hotch spoke up.

"I've worried about this before," he said softly. "Considered it, at least. After Elle was shot, and we found out why… I remember thinking, 'why didn't he go after JJ?' It was her face onscreen. She was the logical choice. And then there was the day in St. Louis, that coward with a gun in his hands, focusing his anger on her because we made her provoke him on television."

"She does her job," Gideon noted.

"But there's an inherent risk, in being…" He took a second to find the words. "… _the face of the BAU_. That's what she is. And what gets me is that I'd thought about it, and I never said a word to her."

"You think she's not smart enough to figure it out for herself? What could you have done?"

Hotch had nothing to say to that, and so they fell into silence for several seconds.

"I'm not one hundred percent convinced she wasn't raped," Hotch said bluntly after a moment.

Gideon looked thoughtful.

"I talked to her," he shared. "While you were talking to Reid, out in the hall."

"And?"

"Rape survivors, when the pain is new, raw… they shy away from the actual word. They say they were assaulted. They say 'the incident', they say 'what happened'…" Gideon paused for a moment, took in a breath. "She's more comfortable with the word 'rape' than the phrase 'sexual assault'. My guess would be that she's telling us the truth. But he got further than she'd like us to think about before she was able to stop him."

Another moment passed in silence.

"If that's our conclusion…" Hotch started, the thought forming in his mind. "He never got to finish the ritual with her. And that's a problem, because..."

He met Gideon's eyes, and Gideon finished the thought for him:

"He's not finished with her yet."

…


	6. Chapter 5

_Author's note: Again, as always, thanks so much for the reviews. And thanks for reading._

_I hope you enjoy this one. Feedback rocks my world. _

**Face**

Chapter Five

…

_He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naïve incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which._

- English author Douglas Adams

…

It was just past midnight.

Reid was making a conscious effort to relax, reclined on the couch in the small, sparse living area of the little safehouse.

He was officially off-duty.

He had been for well over an hour.

He could have gone home.

But going home was dangerous.

Home was where the drugs were.

And it was rapidly becoming crystal clear to him that he had to leave Dilaudid behind, just as soon as he could figure out how.

His psychological evaluation had been postponed by this case, but not cancelled altogether.

If he couldn't impress Hotch enough to change that, or at least impress the psychologist with his mental state when he had to, he stood to lose everything.

And so he'd decided to remove temptation tonight.

He would stay here. All night.

He'd be drug-free. All night.

That was the plan.

If anyone asked, he was staying for JJ.

And he liked to think that it wouldn't even be wholly a lie.

These past few days had reminded him just how much he cared.

He'd been afraid for her, afraid that he might end up without her in his life, and ultimately heartsick for what she'd been through.

He'd truly felt all of that. Intensely.

He cared that much.

Presently, she was fast asleep in the bedroom.

He knew this because he looked in on her frequently.

Because he couldn't be still.

He couldn't just lay there without some kind of distraction.

Not tonight. Not when it had been so long since his last dance with Dilaudid.

He wished she was sitting right there in front of him, hijacking his thoughts in the best possible way.

There had been a time that her presence was the closest thing he had to an addiction.

Back before friendship outweighed what could only be called a crush, back when he'd found excuses to wander into her office several times each day.

But at the moment he was alone in the darkened room, and no matter how hard he tried to fill his mind with thoughts of physics and magic and physics magic and cases and her case and _her_…

Eventually his mind was always invaded by other thoughts.

Corn stalks.

Fish burning.

Pain.

Terror.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

And the promise of sweet oblivion, at the cost of everything else.

He wanted to go wake JJ.

She was beyond exhausted.

She'd been though hell, too.

She'd probably be thrown into a rather horrific PTSD episode of her own if she woke in a darkened bedroom to find a man standing there next to her bed.

And yet he seriously considered it.

Because she just might be his escape route.

His distraction.

_His reason._

The one thing that he wasn't willing to trade for a chemically-induced life of oblivion.

_Maybe_.

Then again, maybe not.

Not when his eyes caught sight of the doorknob and fixated on it.

Thinking that if he stayed here tonight, he would know for sure.

Whether he could stop.

Whether he was an addict.

Thinking that the way he felt right now, he probably didn't want to know.

All he had to do was grab the doorknob.

Stand up.

Walk over.

Reach out and grab it.

And then he'd be almost there.

Like a point of no return.

Heading home.

Heading for that little drawer.

Heading for oblivion…

"Spence?"

He turned quickly.

Found a tousled JJ watching him from the bedroom doorway, blinking away the cobwebs of sleep.

She looked a little shaken.

And yet she focused on him.

"You okay?" she asked quietly.

He just stared at her for a moment.

Finding rational thought.

"Shouldn't that be my line?" He tried for a weak joke. Offered a crooked little half-smile.

Then he made room for her on the couch.

Hoping she'd join him.

This was what he'd wanted. She was awake.

Maybe now he could hang in a while…

"Did I do something to wake you?" he asked, gesturing for her to sit down.

She hesitated for a moment, sinking into the opposite corner of the couch, curling up a bit.

She half-shrugged.

"Nightmare?" he asked, looking her over.

She hesitated for just a second. Then shook her head.

"No. Guess I just couldn't sleep."

The moment of hesitation was just enough to tell him she was lying.

But he supposed that was her right.

She'd thrown a zippered sweater over pajamas that matched her eyes, and she pulled it closer around her now.

Maybe feeling a little self-conscious.

She didn't need to be.

She wore 'tousled' well.

"Cold?" He asked.

She looked over at him. Moonlight shining in her haunted eyes.

Seeming truly unsure what the answer to that question was.

"Yeah," she finally said.

"Me too," he murmured.

They both fell silent, and he was relieved to find that the quiet felt more comfortable than tense.

She leaned her head back against the couch, let her eyes fall shut for a long moment, then stubbornly pulled them open again.

Rejecting sleep.

Or, more likely, rejecting the monsters sleep released on an unguarded mind.

He knew only too well.

He found himself watching her. Watching her heavy eyelids wage a quiet war.

And because he was watching her, he knew that her eyes fell on the clock before they turned back to face him.

There was a curiosity in her expression, and before she could put the obvious question into words, he answered for her.

"An Agent Miller relieved me an hour ago. He's an SSA. With the Organized Crime Unit. Old friend of Hotch, I guess. He's in the kitchen."

The questioning look on her face took on an element of something a little more personal.

She looked almost… touched.

"I didn't want to leave," he admitted, though he neglected to mention that his reasons were varied.

She didn't push him to elaborate, and they fell into silence again.

He was beginning to think she was reluctantly drifting off when she suddenly spoke up.

"Reid?"

He looked up.

"What?"

"Tell me about physics magic gone wrong?"

She phrased it as a question.

A little request.

And he looked over at her, met her imploring eyes.

He was a little thrown.

He knew exactly what she was getting at.

It had been the last time all was well.

Months ago.

On a peaceful car ride out into the country.

To interview a 'witness'.

In Georgia.

He'd been about to tell her a tale.

About a day back in high school. And physics magic gone wrong.

She'd laughed.

Told him to hold that thought.

That they had arrived at their destination.

And he could finish the story later.

But later didn't come.

That day had never been over.

It still wasn't.

"Why?" he asked her now.

But he could see it on her face.

There was something wistful there. A kind of carefully muted longing.

She wanted that moment back.

"Humor me?" she asked softly. Simply. Forcing a little smile, because otherwise the moment threatened to get too intense.

And he obliged her. Happy to fulfill the request.

Because the distraction it provided served his purposes.

Because there was something about a sleepy, wistful, pajama-clad, lit-only-by-moonlight Jennifer Jareau that he couldn't have said no to if he'd tried.

And because he wanted that moment back, too.

"I was twelve," he began. "And, well, a genius."

"Of course," she murmured, a bit sarcastic, but the little smile she cracked was genuine this time.

He found himself smiling, too.

Smiling for real.

And it felt good.

"How does a genius mess up a science experiment?" she prompted.

"Well, he _starts_ by getting assigned a pyromaniac as a lab partner…"

…

As desperately as he'd wished her awake, he later wished twice as hard that she would go back to sleep.

He was _done_.

He _needed_ to get out of there.

His body absolutely refused to stop quivering.

He was cold.

So chilled to the bone.

And well past _starting to_ sweat.

The verdict was in – he couldn't just stop when he wanted to.

Half an hour ago he'd been feeling that that made him weak. Pathetic. A poor excuse for an agent.

But he almost didn't care anymore.

She was taking up most of the couch now, dozing.

He'd long ago gotten up to get some water, and then proceeded to pace around the room.

To the window. To the wall.

Window.

Wall.

And she'd noticed. Moved her feet to allow his thin body to sit down at the end of the couch.

"_Sorry, Spence."_

Like she thought he was wearing a hole in the carpet because she'd taken up the only comfortable space in the room.

He didn't want her suspicious. Didn't want her to process just how far from okay he was.

And so he sat. And willed his body still. And watched her eyelids droop. Praying that she wasn't quite conscious enough to take in the sight of him.

When a wave of nausea swept through him and he barely managed to fight it off, he was through fighting.

He tried to stand up slowly, so as not to shift the couch cushions, not to make them squeak, not to risk jarring her fully awake when she was just starting to slip into a restless slumber.

His limbs refused to move smoothly. And they hurt.

Mercifully, she didn't wake.

Her lips moved without making a sound, but she didn't wake.

Didn't see him starting to slip away.

Didn't get the chance to ask him why.

He froze in mid-step as she shifted, turning over in her sleep.

There was a tiny space in the back of his mind that wasn't completely occupied by his own discomfort, and that tiny part of him noted the slight wince that darkened her features as she eased herself onto her stomach. Sparing her back. And the back of her neck.

But he couldn't find his way to caring about that.

Tomorrow he'd care.

Tomorrow he'd give her and her case everything he had.

But there was only one thing that was going to get him to that moment from this one.

…

In the time it took for Reid to make the perilous drive back to his humble little abode, he ran two stop signs and a red light.

The pre-dawn hour and empty streets were his saving grace.

But he wouldn't consider that until tomorrow.

There were other things he would consider tomorrow, too.

That he was an addict.

That he couldn't stop.

That he had to be careful.

That no one could find out.

JJ would become his excuse, rather than his escape route.

He'd tell himself he had to keep doing this. _Self-medicating_. That was all it was. Keeping himself sane. For her. For her case.

Just get through getting her through.

That was putting her first, right? Being a good friend?

And when she was okay, and he'd helped to make the unsub a non-issue in one way or another, and convinced Hotch that he could handle anything, he would take the multitude of vacation days he had racked up, and string them together, and get through some kind of rehab without anyone ever knowing anything at all.

And then it would be like it never happened.

That was the plan he would come up with tomorrow.

But rational thought escaped him now.

His trembling hands loaded the syringe.

Pulled a loop of fabric tight around his arm.

Plunged the needle into his flesh.

And as the drug rushed into his bloodstream, he _felt_ rather than thought that the others would have to understand, if they could just feel this.

Ignorance was bliss.

And oblivion was, too.

…

Reid was necessarily quite late to work the next day.

He was in control again, at least as much as he had been in recent months, and he had a built-in excuse ready and waiting.

"Sorry I'm late," he called out conversationally, striding carefully casually into the conference room, finding Hotch and Prentiss and Garcia inside. "I stayed late with JJ last night. Thought she could use some company."

He felt a quick stab of something like guilt. Like he was using her.

But he brushed it away, tried to focus on the mass of black-and-white photographs covering the round table.

"Surveillance photos? From where? What are we doing?"

"Working Gideon's 'he followed them home' theory," Prentiss told him, without looking up.

"These are all photos from security cameras," Hotch added. "The parking garage here, the lot behind the Channel Seven news building, and the lot at Living TV. All taken from the night of the corresponding attacks."

Reid nodded, understanding immediately.

"Any vehicles or faces in common yet?"

"We just got started," Hotch told him. "I had some bureaucratic knots to untangle this morning."

"Are they trying to take the case away from us?" Reid asked, less than thrilled at the prospect, even though it seemed entirely logical.

They were far too close to this.

"Not today," Hotch told him, rather gravely, turning his attention back to the photos.

Reid joined them, bent over the table, choosing a stack of photos to work through.

"It's not going to be Garcie for the win this time," Garcia piped up from behind them, tapping away on her laptop.

"Tell me," Hotch instructed, turning to face her.

"I can't track him. Not like this. Every single message was sent from a _different _pre-paid cell phone. And _not_ every single message was sent from the general area around JJ's aunt's house. Actually, not even the same state. Which amounts to zilch on my end."

"Not necessarily on ours," Hotch noted, and Garcia perked up. "It does tell us that he has no qualms about sinking some travel and technology dollars into this… project, that his focus is likely split between monitoring his victims and monitoring his victims' families, and that he's not likely to hold a regular day job, since it probably wouldn't allow for that kind of continuous travel."

"Does that help?"

"It could," Hotch told her, catching the pleased look that crossed her face. "What about dating the song?"

"More than sixty different recordings spanning more than forty years," Garcia reported.

"_Sixty_?" Prentiss questioned, stunned.

"More than," Garcia repeated.

"Um…" Reid hesitated, meeting Hotch's eyes briefly, then turning back to face Garcia. "Can you make CDs for us? Whatever versions you can get ahold of?" he requested.

"In a New York minute," Garcia told him. "Why?"

"The song is important to him, which means the specifics could be important to us," Prentiss filled her in, having caught Reid's point. "The year, the artist, the emotional tone."

"How are you going to figure out which one he uses?" Garcia asked curiously.

The three profilers exchanged vaguely uncomfortable glances.

"Oh." It was all Garcia could say at first. But as she started pulling up files and programs, putting together a disc that would be used (with the best possible intentions) to torment a dear friend, she added rather seriously: "Just for the record? That really sucks."

Hotch sighed audibly.

"I know."

…

An hour later, Emily and Reid stood in front of JJ in what was temporarily her living room, CDs and personal CD player in hand.

"Each track is a different recording of the song," Emily was explaining. "So we'll just skip through them, quick and painless."

She regretted her choice of words almost before she'd finished speaking.

Mainly because if 'painless' sounded a bit ridiculous to her own ears, it had to sound even more absurd to Reid and JJ.

But neither of them said anything, and so Emily sat down on the coffee table and pulled from her pocket the little earbuds Morgan had sent along. (Speakers were harder to come by on short notice.)

Reid took the track listing Garcia had provided out of his own pocket, and took the seat next to JJ on the couch.

He passed her the CD player and the tiny earphones, and then caught her gaze.

"Ready?" he asked quietly.

She nodded, and threw in an awkward, stilted half-shrug that, contrary to its intent, did exactly the opposite of convincing them that she was just fine.

The room was eerily silent for Reid and Emily as they began, thanks to the headphones.

JJ listened to each track for barely more than a few seconds before shaking her head, almost imperceptibly. Barely moving.

She kept her composure.

A person would have to be a profiler or a friend (or both) to see the strain.

To know that her straight back and feet flat on the floor meant that she was actively trying to look untouched, because Jennifer Jareau only worried about her posture when she was behind a podium. The way she sat and moved, when only her own team was nearby, was casual. Youthful, even.

Except when she had to think about it.

And there were her fingers, too, giving her away. Curled into fists, because maybe they wouldn't shake that way.

Her eyes, refusing to land anywhere but floor or ceiling.

Her breathing, _too_ even. Deliberate and unnatural.

And her wordless responses as they moved through the process, because it was easier to mask emotion when you didn't speak.

Both Emily and Reid took in all of these things, and had the sense not to comment on any of them.

When they'd gone through one full disc, Reid exchanged it for another in the player.

It was a brief reprieve, and none of them spoke, and a moment later they continued as before.

Barely three seconds after Reid flipped to the seventh track of the second disc, JJ grabbed at the cords hanging from her ears, ripping them away.

"That's the one."

"You're sure?" Reid double-checked. "You only heard the opening notes."

She nodded. Drew in a few more of those carefully regulated breaths.

"We're talking about a multitude of very similar recordings," Emily pointed out. "Maybe --"

"She said she's sure," Reid interrupted, gently but firmly, and Emily took the hint and backed off.

Reid consulted the track listing.

"Dean Martin, 1952," he read out loud. "That's odd. The vast majority of people make their strongest emotional attachments to music in their teenage years, which would put the unsub at seventy years old or older which is… highly unlikely, to say the least."

"He didn't have to listen to the song at its peak popularity," Prentiss pointed out. "And we're not talking about the average person enjoying a favorite tune."

Reid nodded distractedly, thinking it over.

"JJ, explain to me the song part again," he prompted, turning on the couch so that he was facing her more fully.

She thought back for a moment. Failed to hide the slight shiver that shot through her.

"He just… played it over and over again."

"And you're sure it was a CD he'd brought with him?"

"He brought it. Played it in _my_ stereo system."

Reid's eyes widened, surprised.

"That's leaving an awful lot up to chance for an unsub compelled to complete a specific ritual," Reid noted.

"Not really," Emily countered. "Who doesn't have a CD player in their home these days?"

"Me," Reid answered matter-of-factly. And when he took in the tiny smile of amusement that just barely graced JJ's lips, he matched it with one of his own.

But then they had to move forward, and the smiles died away.

"When exactly did he put the music on?"

"As soon as he had me…" She fumbled for the word. "Restrained. The whole time after that, until right before he freed my hands." She paused, added contemplatively: "He had it on 'repeat' so long that my speakers rebelled."

This time Reid's eyes narrowed, intrigued.

"What do you mean?"

"It just… the song got cut off and it was just this tone."

Something sparked and sputtered in Reid's mind.

Hanging there just out of reach.

It was the same feeling that anyone else would have with the elusive name of an acquaintance stuck on the tip of their tongue.

"Describe it," he instructed quietly, starting to stare through her, feeling _thisclose_ to breaking through to something. "Tell me about it."

"Why?"

He couldn't explain it.

What was it about the word 'tone' that _almost_ called up a connection in his head?

"Reid --" Emily tried to say something.

"Shhh!" he shushed her, bringing his hands up by his ears. "JJ…"

"I don't know what you want me to say, Spence." She sounded almost apologetic. "It was just this clear tone."

And _that did it_!

Mouth hanging open, inhibition destroyed by excitement, Reid moved over closer to JJ on the couch, invading her personal space without even thinking about it, brushing her hair away from her neck and positioning himself so that he could examine anew the image she'd been marked with.

"Reid…" Emily's tone was one of warning, her eyes on JJ's startled face.

"It wasn't the speakers," he blurted out, talking fast. "It wasn't on 'repeat', it was part of the CD!"

JJ turned her eyes up toward Emily, threw her a questioning look.

But Emily was staring intently at Reid.

"What are you trying to say?" Emily asked him.

He met her eyes.

"The burned image, I know what it is!"

…


	7. Chapter 6

_Author's note: I was so thrilled with the response to the last chapter – thank you to everyone who reviewed! It definitely spurred me on. _

_Hope you enjoy this one. _

**Face**

Chapter Six

_Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds._

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

…

"Why the 911?" Morgan queried, striding quickly into the bullpen, Garcia on his heels.

"Reid's had some sort of epiphany," Hotch informed him, leaning against Reid's desk, arms crossed.

Gideon was standing a few feet away, squinting at something in a file folder.

"Of course he has," Morgan said with a sigh. And because they all knew him well, they heard appreciation where others would have heard only bitterness.

"He's on his way," Hotch noted. "Prentiss, too."

"And one more," a familiar voice broke in, and they all looked up to see JJ approaching with Reid and Prentiss. "I needed a change of scenery," she explained, her gaze bouncing from one of them to another, looking vaguely unsettled and uncertain, because it was odd to have to explain her presence here at home base.

Hotch gave her a look.

Not unhappy to see her, but ever the consummate professional, concerned with the rules.

"The issue is, JJ, you really --"

"Can't be involved in working the case," she finished for him. "I got that. Loud and clear. Um, Reid actually already told me the basics of his new theory," she acknowledged, and her expression darkened for just a moment before she covered her unease and tipped her head in the general direction of her office. "I think I'm just gonna check my mail. Maybe crash Garcia's office."

Garcia lit up, opened her mouth to say something undoubtedly colorful, then glanced at Gideon and thought better of it.

"Your company would be much appreciated," she stated, rather formally, and Morgan cracked a smile, then turned to face Reid.

"So you going to keep us in suspense, or what?"

Reid took in a quick, deep breath, ready to launch into it, but Hotch spoke first.

"We should move this into the conference room," he instructed.

The three younger profilers started to move in that general direction, while Garcia and JJ began making their way toward JJ's office; Garcia chattered quietly but animatedly, JJ pulled herself up the stairs with an effort.

Hotch watched them go. Gideon's gaze lingered in the same direction.

"Circles under the eyes," Gideon observed.

"For a long while now," Hotch agreed.

They exchanged a glance.

Their motivation renewed.

And they followed after Reid and Morgan and Prentiss.

…

"There are people who are driven by the idea of something inherently natural," Reid uttered quickly, his hands quivering excitedly. "They see the energies of the universe aligned, in -- in nature! In sound waves, light waves, even the waves of the ocean. And electricity! They're compelled by --"

"It's a sine wave," Gideon murmured, almost to himself, taking a step toward the photo board.

"Precisely!" Reid spoke on an inhale, smiling widely, thrilled that Gideon agreed with him.

"We're looking for a mathematician?" Morgan asked, sounding dubious.

"Not at all -- not necessarily, at least -- I think we're looking for someone so lacking meaning in his life that he tries to create it. Tries to make things 'right', the way a musician tries to play a note so pure that an oscilloscope -- a machine that measures waveforms -- would register it as a perfect sine wave."

With the exception of Gideon, who was perusing the photos on the board as if alone in the room, everyone looked skeptical.

Reid took a deep breath, prepared to explain himself.

"All the things that didn't make sense to us… He's married to his ritual, and yet, sometimes he frees their hands, sometimes he doesn't. He's seeking women on television, and yet he picks his victims here in _Virginia_?!"

Hotch's eyebrows lifted thoughtfully, getting Reid's point.

But Prentiss met Reid's eyes, still a little lost.

"Walk me through this," she requested matter-of-factly. "Couldn't a sine wave represent a lot of different things?"

"It could, but looking at the rest of the case, I think he's convinced himself that what he's doing is somehow meant to be -- like a recurring pattern in nature. It's actually not as uncommon as you would think, to assign meaning to a random occurrence. A person thinks, 'if that light turns red before I get to it, I'm not meant to do these errands today'. But when that logic is adopted by a sociopath…" Reid let his voice trail off, hoping they'd caught his point.

Hotch jumped in to finish the thought:

"It becomes something like 'If she's looking at me when the song finishes, the handcuffs are meant to come off'."

Reid nodded vigorously, added:

"And, 'if that woman on the screen, the one I'm so attracted to, if she's right here in town, she's meant to be mine'."

Prentiss took at a seat at the table, her eyes drifting over to the board of case photos.

"Might also explain why he left the presence of a CD player up to chance," she offered. "If fate wants that particular woman to be his, the CD player will be there. If not, the woman's off the hook."

"Probably," he told her, and then looked at her like a light bulb was switching on above his head. "And we can use that!"

Prentiss smiled at him, realizing what he meant.

"We'll get Garcia on it." She glanced around at the others, as if for approval. "Local, recent break-ins, with nothing taken, no obvious motive. Home of a woman with some kind of television presence, living alone. Likely blonde."

Morgan sat down at the table next to Prentiss, rubbed the back of his neck.

"You got all this from the version of the song?" he asked, a bit incredulous.

"Actually, not at all," Reid answered him. "It was a 1952 version, Dean Martin. And if he's really adopting parts of his ritual thanks to moments he thinks are somehow 'right', that may mean nothing. It could be as simple as his having heard it at some significant moment in his past. Or, maybe, when he saw a beautiful local blonde woman on television. The first time." He paused, took in a breath. "It was actually something JJ mentioned. That he played the song on repeat so long that she thought her speakers broke, or… well, something to that effect. She said there was a clear tone. And the vibration pattern of a clear tone… it's a sine wave."

"Good work," Gideon offered from across the room, without turning to look at any of them.

It confirmed for them that he was, in fact, listening.

He turned to face them a second later.

His thoughts processed.

His theory ready to verbalize.

"We already had reason to believe that this unsub had no regular job, and yet no financial concerns," he acknowledged. "Now we know he's _creating_ purpose, meaning, his idea of fate. We know he's more than lucid. He's intelligent. Clever. Educated." Gideon looked around the room, catching their intent gazes. He gestured with both hands as he continued: "Life's too easy. He's filling his days, killing his boredom, taking things he can't buy. He has to actively search for something _to_ _want_. Because nothing challenges him, nothing ever has." He paused, looked from one colleague to another, the tiniest smile curving his lips upward. "We're looking for a former academic superstar living off of a trust fund."

Hotch's near-smile matched Gideon's.

It felt right to him.

He turned to Prentiss.

"Your theory about unmotivated break-ins is a good one, but it's going to have to wait. I think it's time we headed down to local PD."

Gideon nodded.

"Time to provide a profile."

…

Hotch went back to his office just before joining the others at their vehicle.

He only intended to be there briefly. To grab his keys, and make sure there were no particularly urgent messages awaiting him.

An email from Haley slowed him down.

There was an attached video. Jack making an enthusiastic attempt to recite the alphabet.

It brought a smile to his face.

Lifted a pound or two from his shoulders.

It was short, and he watched it twice.

Having given the rest of the team fifteen minutes to get their things together, he was certain that he wasn't making anyone wait.

He was the boss, of course, and if he did hold everyone else up, there wouldn't be much they could say about it.

But he never put himself above the group. Even in such small ways.

He was one of them, working by their sides.

He chose to be.

Whenever the job allowed it.

And so he began to head out the door before he really wanted to, believing he still had time to spare.

And he crashed head-on into Reid.

"Wha-- hey-- you okay?" he caught Reid by the arm, steadied him.

Reid nodded.

And he looked steady enough, healthy enough, standing there hesitating to say whatever he had come to say.

But there was a flash of something shifty and wild in his eyes, and Hotch frowned.

"Did you need something?" Hotch asked.

Reid still refused to meet his eyes.

"You think the rest of you can handle presenting the profile without me today?"

Hotch looked at him, said nothing for a moment.

Too many unsettling potential motivations for this particular request raced through his mind.

Too many thoughts, all of them worries he'd had for a while.

But he didn't voice any of it out loud.

Because that would be opening a can of worms none of them could close.

"Are you all right?" he asked instead, watching Reid closely.

"I'm fine, _I'm_ fine," Reid said quickly. "I actually just thought maybe I should be assigned to the safehouse again. With JJ. She, um, I think she really kind of liked having me there. Really."

"Yesterday you were concerned about actively working the case."

"I still am," Reid insisted. "Hotch, I just cracked a big part of it!"

Hotch nodded.

There was no doubting Reid had made a huge contribution.

But he seemed so scarily capable of slipping back and forth across that fine line between brilliant and broken.

Between steady and shaky.

Sober and…

"Reid," Hotch began quietly, not quite sure what he would say next. He gestured for Reid to step back into his office, and when they were both inside, he closed the door.

"What?" Reid asked, clearly less than thrilled to be there.

Hotch began to speak to him slowly and clearly.

Willing to open up a tiny window into his own life, if that's what it took.

Praying that, somehow, his meaning would come through loud and clear.

"When I arrive home at night, my son thinks it's time for fun and games. He thinks my presence means he has a pal nearby. And he does. For a lot of reasons, and my own guilt isn't the least of them, my wife is the disciplinarian." He paused, tried to catch Reid's gaze. "I let my son get away with a lot. Because I can. _At home_, I have that luxury."

Hotch went silent, watching Reid's face for some sign that he got the message.

Reid swallowed hard, shook his head a little bit.

"Hotch… are you going to put me with JJ at the safehouse?"

Hotch sighed. Thought for a moment. Nodded resignedly.

He watched a satisfied Reid take off in the direction of Garcia's office, and thought that it might not have been a good idea to have him in front of a room full of people right now, anyway.

And then, as he began to make the walk toward the parking garage, Hotch comforted himself with the fact that he wasn't stuck in this kind of predicament with the other of his two youngest (agents, that was).

JJ, he could help. Without worrying for her career.

Starting by presenting this profile.

…

When Reid pushed his way into Garcia's office, he found JJ there alone, sipping a chilled drink of some kind.

"Hi," he greeted, his tone a bit clipped, sounding vaguely impatient.

"Hey," she returned, and when she noticed him looking at the cup in her hand, she offered an explanation. "Iced… caffeine… something-or-other." She shrugged, then continued. "Garcia's idea. She's got it in her head that if hot coffee doesn't sit well with me anymore, iced coffee variations must be pure joy."

"That's… sweet?" Reid half asked and half stated, reaching out to twirl one of Garcia's fancy pens between his usually nimble fingers.

"It is," JJ agreed.

And she meant it.

Garcia had a wonderful way of expressing excessive concern in a light-hearted manner.

It was comfort, pure and simple, without any implied assessment or judgment.

It made her feel warm rather than weak.

It was a godsend.

"She's even letting you drink it in her office," Reid piped up, sounding impressed, pulling JJ from her thoughts.

"Wonders never cease," she replied with a shrug, taking another sip from the cup while Reid bent to pick up the pen he'd fumbled to the floor.

"Um, about today," he started as he righted himself again, hesitating a bit. "I have to go downtown with the rest of the team -- did anyone tell you we're presenting the profile?"

"Yeah, Morgan stopped by. Emily, too. And Hotch, actually."

"Right. Um, I might stay with them for a while after that, work through some theories with them, but then later on Hotch has me assigned to the safehouse again. So, Agent Phillips is going to drive you back there, and I'll see you later?"

"Sure," she told him, looking him over, a bit confused by the slight nervousness and unease in his tone. "You should get going, though. The others are probably down there waiting for you."

"Right. Right. Okay."

He forced a tight smile, and turned and left the room, narrowly missing Garcia, who returned, snack in hand, seconds later.

"Have I saved the world yet?" she inquired casually, glancing at the computer screen, at a program she'd left running.

JJ didn't bother to respond to that particular question. She didn't have a witty reply, and it certainly wasn't a question that called for a serious answer.

Garcia held out a piece of her red licorice, offering to share, but JJ shook her head back and forth.

"No thanks."

Garcia sighed dramatically and dropped into her desk chair.

"My friend, I am going to show you a program I put together just recently, and if the boss man doesn't like you eye-balling anything related to the case, well… just this once, that's his problem."

JJ gave her a mildly curious look.

"Why?"

"Because I think it might be what the doctor ordered. The doctor in question, of course, being me."

JJ watched as Garcia typed out a command or two with expert fingers, and a new screen popped up.

JJ had spent enough time in this room with Garcia to know that the computer was running names through a database.

She realized quickly that the names were people she knew.

Friends, family, professional contacts.

Flying by alphabetically.

"It's running twenty-four-seven," Garcia announced. "Hotch gave me the list you gave him, which I assume you printed from your PDA software on your PC?"

JJ nodded, eyes glued to the screen.

"Mmmmhmmm."

"If any of these names show up in current police reports, hospital reports or newspaper articles, I will know about it almost before they do." She reached out, touched JJ's arm, waited for her to look at her. "Hey… so far, so good. It's been two days. No news is good news, right?"

JJ nodded, turning her eyes back to the computer.

Watching the flashing box like it was a lifeline.

The box promised: NO MATCH FOUND.

"You want to know what I think?" Garcia asked. "I think this uber-scum unsub-du-jour is a master bluffer. Nothing's going to happen to any of these people, Jayje."

JJ nodded again, more in acknowledgement than agreement.

But she couldn't tear her eyes away from the screen.

…

"JJ?" Reid called out later that night, when he got to the safehouse.

"Hey, what took you so long?" JJ called back, and he traced her voice to the kitchen, and went to meet her.

"Sorry about that," he said quickly, hoping she wouldn't push for an explanation.

He'd needed a dose.

(Not a fix.

A dose.)

And then he'd needed adequate time to reach something resembling equilibrium.

"It's fine," she murmured distractedly, as he entered the kitchen and found her looking through a nearly empty cupboard. "They don't keep this place too well stocked, do they?"

Reid shrugged, and went to stand next to her, looking over the cupboard's meager contents as she did.

"Guess not," he said after a moment.

"By the way… did Hotch change the general game plan around here?"

"Why?"

"Up until now there's always been someone on the inside with me. Not that I need it, but Hotch seemed kind of set on it."

Reid froze.

Up until that very moment, it hadn't even occurred to him that he might be leaving her vulnerable, that he was leaving them an agent short without even letting them know.

He hadn't been thinking.

He'd just been wanting… craving…

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, meaning it, trying not to think about the price she'd pay if anything went wrong. She turned to face him, looking a bit confused, and he backtracked. "I think that, Hotch and I, we got our lines crossed somewhere. But I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to be here for a while now."

"Good," JJ said simply. "You can help me with dinner."

"Isn't it kind of late for dinner?" Reid asked, glancing at his watch.

JJ shrugged, and Reid watched her for a moment, as she pulled open drawer after drawer.

She seemed… livelier.

A little less numb than she'd been in recent days.

"You're… in good spirits," he observed, his tone a bit cautious, as if saying it out loud could change that it was true.

She turned to glance at him for just a second before returning her focus to searching the fridge and the freezer, and he realized that she didn't really _look_ any more at peace than she had lately.

"You guys are making headway and no one's getting hurt. I got to take a little field trip, and I actually managed to have a decent nap. Guess that adds up to good spirits."

She sounded far too detached to mean any of it, and she went right back to taking a rather rapid kitchen inventory.

And as he watched her, he realized what she was doing.

Because he'd done it before, himself.

Even before Tobias and Dilaudid.

He knew that need to just keep moving.

Just keep doing.

Keep plunging through a mindless task.

Just stay busy.

Don't think.

Just do.

Sometimes, that even worked for a while.

"Do you feel like pasta with ready-made sauce, or frozen pizza?" she asked him suddenly.

"Frozen pizza!" His response was immediate, and when she turned to glance at him, he gave her a boyish grin, and he could have sworn the smile it elicited from her was one of genuine amusement.

And so he decided to play along.

Why not stay busy, shove their troubles to 'later'?

"Hey JJ?" He started, feeling and sounding a bit like his old self. "Have you ever actually stopped to think about the science of cooking? It's actually more complex than you'd think…"

…

The heavy quiet returned too soon.

There wasn't really a catalyst for it.

Except perhaps that when they started eating, they stopped talking, and without the chatter they had entirely too much time to think.

Too much time to get lost in their own minds, wandering amongst the monsters.

She lost her appetite about half way through a slice of frozen pizza, and he didn't fare much better.

They didn't even bother to clean up. She stood without warning and tossed her plate into the sink, and made her way out into the living area. He followed suit soon after.

They shared the couch, both of them feigning interest in the newspaper one of the other agents had left for her earlier.

As dusk turned to night outside, she realized she hadn't turned a page in a long while.

And more notably, _he_ hadn't turned a page in a long while.

And when the silence in the room and the noise in her head started eating away at her, she spoke up.

"You want to hear something scary?" she asked him quietly, trying to sound casual. "Something kind of wrong?"

He put down the newspaper, and turned to look at her.

"Okay…"

"The thing the unsub does, the way his mind works… sometimes mine works the same way."

He watched her intently, as if this could actually mean something to him, and she wasn't sure why.

"In what way?" he asked.

She waited a beat, finding the words.

"I'll be… I'll just be sitting at my desk, staring down at two worthy cases… and there's just no easy way to make the decision. Sometimes there's nothing that stands out, nothing that makes one more urgent than the other. And I just end up sitting there, knowing I have to pick something and get a presentation together…" She paused, and for a second he just listened to her breathe. "I've actually flipped a coin. I've done that," she mused. "And sometimes… sometimes I stare at the phone, and I think, 'if my phone rings in the next thirty seconds, we take _this_ case, not that one'. And then it's almost like it's not my fault. If I picked the wrong one. If people die and we might have done better if I'd gone the other way…" She shook her head a little bit, almost to herself, almost like she was still convincing herself. "It's not me, it's just… fate. Just meant to be." She looked up, met his eyes. "How twisted is that? The sick freak that did this, I think like him."

She expected him to respond directly, to tell her how wrong she was to compare herself to him.

But instead he said quietly, sounding horribly vulnerable:

"You want to hear my side of something scary? Something kind of wrong?"

She just stared at him for a moment, surprised to hear his voice crack slightly.

Then she nodded.

"Yeah."

"I'm a lot like Tobias," he nearly whispered, holding her gaze with tortured eyes. "It's entirely possible I'm not all that much saner than him."

She started to shake her head, to disagree with him.

But she caught herself.

Realizing that right now, between them, understanding meant more than reassurances.

And so she just waited, and let him continue.

"You know that my mother has schizophrenia," he noted, looking away from her now.

She nodded again.

"Did you also know that some of the smartest minds in the world believe that schizophrenia is genetically linked? They think it has to do with a gene on chromosome five." He paused, took a few deep breaths. "They say it's… they say that… that when there's a genetic pre-disposition, symptoms can be brought on by stress." He paused again. Hesitating on the inside. And then he added: "Or drug use."

He could feel her staring at him then. Maybe figuring something out. Maybe not.

She said nothing, and so he continued, with his eyes locked on the wall in front of him:

"Some of the smartest minds in the world think I'm going to end up exactly like my mother." His voice dropped to an even lower volume. "And a lot like Tobias."

They fell into silence again.

He waited for her to say something.

Seconds passed… ticking by…

He swallowed back the threat of tears.

And then:

"Spence?"

He drew in a deep breath, sounding impossibly fragile when he responded:

"Yeah?"

"Once upon a time? Some of the smartest minds in the world thought the world was flat."

He could have kissed her for that.

He found himself half chuckling and half losing it, and he looked over at her, saw the little smile working it's way past the concern on her face.

And they were quiet again for a moment.

Sitting there together.

Neither having truly made peace with anything, both painfully aware of that fact, and yet comforted because for the moment, they'd let each other in.

And it hadn't hurt.

It was the least alone and the most okay either of them had been a while.

And maybe that meant they were heading in the right direction.

Maybe they could both make it through to a better place.

Maybe, if he could remember how much he had to lose…

If that little box on Garcia's screen never found a match…

If they could hang in long enough to let the scars fade…

And there were no more scars to come…

And nothing else went wrong…

Maybe…

…

Several miles from where JJ and Reid were hidden away from the world, a determined young man pressed the power button on his top-of-the-line computer, watched it boot up.

He began to type a letter.

He already knew exactly what it had to say.

He finished in no time, went to his liquor cabinet, poured himself a drink, took a sip.

And then he went to load his gun.

…


	8. Chapter 7

_Author's note: Much thanks again for each and every review. Means a lot. _

_Hope you enjoy this one. I'd love to hear from you. _

**Face**

Chapter Seven

…

_Peace visits not the guilty mind._

_- _Juvenal

…

"Hearts, alone."

JJ spoke quietly, but it was an announcement all the same.

She was going to handle this one without Reid.

The look that passed between them was vaguely conspiratorial, and not without a hint of amusement.

And, not for the first time, Morgan wondered if there was some serious cheating going on.

They were winning by a healthy six-to-zero.

He and Prentiss just weren't getting the cards – and he had a pretty good notion that there was nothing coincidental about that.

Still, things were good.

Things were starting to feel normal.

It had been his idea to stop by the safehouse and check in on JJ and Reid before heading home for the day, and it hadn't taken much to convince Prentiss to come along.

They'd found the two younger agents in good spirits (relatively speaking), and talked them into just one game of cards.

Euchre.

The perfect game for four.

They'd fallen into partnerships without ever actually discussing it out loud.

Watching JJ pull in every card in the Euchre deck and shoot Reid a triumphant little smile, Morgan figured there were a few other things JJ and Reid were managing to communicate without words.

But it was kind of a nice thing, seeing them like this.

And so when he got on their case about the cheating, it was only because teasing them was a joy.

"Hey, Partner," Morgan called across the table to Prentiss. "You think we've been had?"

Reid put on his best poker face, which, to those who knew him, wasn't very effective.

"I wouldn't cheat you."

Morgan tossed him an incredulous look, and his eyes hit the table.

"_JJ_ wouldn't cheat you," Reid tried instead, but Morgan's expression didn't change.

JJ cleared her throat.

"Guess that's the game." She smiled, almost like she used to. "Pay up."

Morgan grabbed for his wallet, and a second later slapped a dollar into her hand.

"Don't spend it all in one place."

Next to him, Prentiss was paying Reid.

At a buck a game, the stakes were so low that paying up was little more than a formality.

But it added a little something, gave them a little bit more to kid each other about.

And kidding each other… that was the fun of it.

Morgan watched another smile pass between JJ and Reid.

They seemed to be getting closer to okay.

He realized that he'd missed seeing them like that.

And that he didn't feel like taking off just yet.

"Best two out of three," he announced, telling rather than asking, and he snatched up the deck of cards.

Everyone seemed agreeable, and he was shuffling effortlessly when his phone rang.

He glanced at the call display, dropped the cards in front of Prentiss.

"Keep 'em down," he instructed, his tone playful. "He can't memorize the cards if he can't see 'em."

Already smiling, he stepped away and glanced at his call display screen.

His smile grew.

"Hey Gorgeous," he greeted Garcia. "Guess who's having fun without you? What's goin' down over there?"

He tossed her an opening for their usual banter.

But she responded:

"Where are you?"

And his heart sank.

Those three little somber words were enough to tell him that, somehow or other, it had all gone horribly wrong.

He listened as Garcia filled him in. Took in the details. Turned to face JJ.

The irony of it wasn't lost on him, as he sat down next to her and gently took her hand of cards away.

She was supposed to be the person on the other side of these notifications.

She'd know how to handle this.

He didn't.

"That was Garcia," he acknowledged quietly.

JJ just looked back him, already steeling herself for the worst.

He knew, a part of her hadn't stopped expecting this moment.

A sense of dread was written all over her face, and his eyes flickered to Emily's and then Reid's, just so that he could avoid the fear in JJ's for a second or two.

"Who is Nicholas Burke to you?" Morgan asked, wanting to ease her into the news.

But there was no easing into it, because he'd seen enough people in these moments to recognize the expression on her face, and realize that she already knew exactly where this was going.

Her mouth dropped open ever-so-slightly, and her pained eyes drifted away from his.

"JJ… Was he a friend? Boyfriend?" He could have cursed himself the moment the words were out of his mouth, and he realized he was speaking in the past tense.

So much for easing into this.

She fought to mask the emotion, struggled to sound calm as she asked:

"How? How did…?"

"He was shot, last night."

Tears finally sprang to her eyes, no doubt against her will.

Emily spoke up:

"That doesn't necessarily mean that it was because of y --" She caught herself. "That it was because of this. People die every day. No one knows that better than us."

JJ shook her head back and forth, rejecting the idea, and then stood up and wandered a few steps away, hiding her face from them.

Reid stood, too, and approached her.

"Is this the Nick who took you to see your first professional football game?" He asked her, recalling that she'd mentioned it at the one and only game they'd been to together.

"My high school boyfriend," she murmured, her voice thick with banished tears. "Just a good friend, since then. He, uh, still lives back home. Near my aunt, actually. He runs his dad's sporting goods store. He's, uh… He's a real good guy, you know, he… Noah and Nat think he walks on water." She quieted for a moment, and the rest of them exchanged an uncertain and vaguely uncomfortable glance. "I should, um, call them. I should call home."

She turned to head for the bedroom, but Reid reached out to stop her.

"JJ, you did the right --"

"Don't," she warned him, twisting out of his grasp.

She disappeared into the bedroom, started to pull the door shut behind her.

Morgan grabbed the door handle.

Thinking that maybe he could make up the difference now, for that night in Georgia, when she'd come looking for comfort and he'd handed her guilt.

He met her eyes, she looked away.

"It's not your fault. None of it."

She slammed the door in his face.

…

"JJ hears nothing of this," Hotch ordered quietly, scanning the blood-stained letter that had been left with poor Nicholas Burke.

"You don't think we could use this to our advantage?" Gideon questioned, and Hotch shot him a stern look.

"We're not using JJ as bait."

"She's a federal agent! This is the same young woman who hit two moving targets, in near darkness, while under attack! She can handle herself."

"It's not her, it's the conditions he's demanding," Hotch insisted. "He's thought of too many angles. Wide open country road, metal detectors, a change of clothing, _driving with the trunk open_? She can't be armed, she can't wear a tracking device, there's absolutely nowhere for us to hide. The risk level is just too high."

"He's not going to stop this." Gideon stood firm, gestured to the letter. "He's promised as much."

"Then we're going to have to find him fast. We can have Reid analyze the wording and the writing, and I think we're nearing the point where we have to get some kind of warning out --"

"Sirs?"

They both looked up, found Garcia in the doorway.

"Protecting JJ is where my head goes first, too, I assure you, and I question your judgement only in the humblest manner," she told them, her nervous voice almost _too_ full of respect. "But is ignoring the unsub altogether really a good idea? There are a lot more innocent people on that list. Uh, including us. And you know JJ would hate to be kept in the dark."

"I don't want JJ thinking for even a second that she should give in to his demands. And I wouldn't put it past her." Hotch was a bit dismissive about it.

"What exactly are his demands?" Garcia asked him.

Hotch sighed heavily.

"What it boils down to? JJ turns herself over to him, alone and unarmed, or more people die."

"How long did he give?" Garcia asked.

"Twenty-four hours, from the time of the last murder. Which leaves about three hours now."

At that, they all fell silent for a moment.

Finally, Garcia spoke up, solemn and miserable:

"I'll let you know when someone else dies."

She exited the room, and Hotch met Gideon's eyes.

"We'll find another way," Hotch told him. "Serving JJ up on a silver platter is not an option."

…

After Morgan and Prentiss left, Reid spent a good half hour or so thinking about what he would say and do before he knocked on JJ's door.

Last night all they'd needed was a little understanding to get closer, to get each other through.

He wanted tonight to be much the same.

He thought maybe he could get through to her, because he knew a lot about guilt.

Maybe he could tell her about Tobias, about being responsible for the death of the good in him as well as the bad.

Maybe he could convince her he was partly responsible for Nick's death, since he'd pushed her to tell him the truth.

Maybe he could even hold her, like he did that night at his apartment.

Like Nick probably used to.

He pushed the door open quietly, found her laying on the bed, on top of the rumpled covers.

"The others left," he told her gently. "It's just me."

He thought that should mean something, but she didn't move, or turn her head to look at him.

He wandered awkwardly into the room, tried to see her expression in the dark.

A sliver of moonlight cut her face in two, just below her watery eyes.

Her eyes always seemed darker when she'd been crying.

He knew that by now.

"If you're blaming yourself, you might as well blame me," he told her, reaching the side of the bed, looking down at her. "I pushed you into telling me, telling Hotch."

"I made a choice."

She sounded numb again, her tone expressionless.

"JJ… you had to do something. Something had to give."

She didn't respond in any way.

He added:

"He would have come after you again."

She gave away nothing.

He knelt down beside the bed, put their heads at more of the same level.

He thought briefly about asking her to open up about Nick, about how close they were or weren't these days.

But getting her to talk about her former boyfriend seemed rather counter-productive at the moment.

He had it in his head that the road to comfort was in understanding.

It was the two of them together like that.

Like last night.

So instead of asking about Nick, he told her about himself.

"I understand, JJ," he nearly whispered.

He reached out, touched her hand, but didn't take it in his own.

"I know all about guilt, okay?" His quiet tone was just shy of truly eager, wanting to share this with her. "Especially the kind that no one else would actually think you should feel. I don't… I don't really know how to fix it. Um, for me, either… any more than for you. But I… I thought maybe that, that I've been there might matter, because… I get it."

He looked at her, hoping she'd sit up and let him fold her into an embrace.

"Reid," she started, and before she said anything else, that alone was a quick, efficient stab to his heart, because they were alone together and she wasn't calling him 'Spence'.

"Yes?" He answered hopefully, nonetheless.

"Please just get out."

It took a second for the words to hit him, and his breath caught in his throat.

"JJ…"

Fear struck him, because he knew that he needed her to need him.

On an emotional level, sure.

But on a practical level too.

He couldn't go home feeling like this.

He couldn't go home feeling rejected right now…

He was far too likely to go to far…

"We don't have to talk," he tried, sounding a little bit desperate even to his own ears.

"Leave me alone, Reid," she said, with no sense of how her use of his last name could pierce his heart.

"JJ…"

"Just get out."

…

By the time Reid was half way home, he'd moved on from feeling afraid of what he'd do when he got there, to feeling eager to find out.

So he couldn't be the one to get JJ through this.

Whatever.

Like he cared.

He headed straight for that ominous and beautiful little drawer the second he entered his apartment.

Thinking that he would have done this tonight, anyway.

Maybe he wouldn't have been quite so eager, or quite so careless.

Maybe he wouldn't have been so intent on dulling the emotional ache that he didn't bother to do the mental math, to consider how much his body weight could take.

But he'd never really stopped.

He'd just come up with a plan.

For JJ's sake.

Whatever.

There was nothing he could do about the amount of Dilaudid in his system now.

It was already there, and he was liking it more and more.

Before he drifted away completely, he heard Morgan's voice ringing out somewhere nearby.

Something about a letter.

Something about not answering his cell phone.

Something about having to call him here.

Something about a deadline.

Something about needing him.

But there was nothing he could do about that, now, either.

…

It took Morgan five minutes of pounding on Reid's door before it ever occurred to him that it might not be locked.

The handle turned easily in his palm, which was just unsettling enough to make him reach for his gun.

No one who had been through what Reid had been through left his door unlocked.

Not unless he was out of his head.

Still, on the off chance that he could walk in on Reid just getting out of the shower, or something, he called out before he entered.

"Reid? It's Morgan. You here? You okay?"

He waited, listened.

Nothing.

He shoved the door open all the way.

And he didn't even have to step inside to see him.

Reid was right there in front of him.

Curled up on the damn floor.

_Unconscious_.

…

While Morgan panicked over Reid's lifeless form and JJ cried herself to sleep in a safehouse, the man pulling the strings was watching the clock.

Time was almost up.

They weren't going to do what needed to be done.

He'd suspected as much.

'Plan B' was ready and waiting.

It was a brilliant act, a means to an end.

The perfect kidnapping.

It _had to be_ perfect.

He was playing with the big boys now.

And he knew – he was absolutely certain – they wouldn't see this coming.

…


	9. Chapter 8

_Author's note: The response to the last chapter was fantastic. Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed. _

_Things are about to get kicked up a notch – I'd love to hear what you think. _

_Enjoy!_

**Face**

Chapter Eight

…

_That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil._

– Friedrich Nietzsche

…

Morgan had punched the '9' and the first '1' into his cell phone when a softly mumbled, indistinguishable utterance reached his ears, and he paused and turned to look at Reid.

His eyes were open.

Barely.

"Reid?"

"Hmmm?" He blinked, looked around. "Morgan?"

Morgan grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand, by the chin with the other.

Looked him over.

Almost wishing the kid had bruises, or a bump on his head.

Wishing there was something going on that didn't involve the discarded syringe on the floor.

Something simpler.

Something that'd be easier to get him through.

"Look at me, Reid," he ordered softly. "You hear me all right?"

Reid looked vaguely confused at that.

"Yeah, I can hear you. What did… I guess I fell asleep…"

"Yeah, with a little help," Morgan noted, and he held up the syringe.

Reid's eyes widened slowly as reality set in.

Morgan sighed, pulled Reid into a sitting position.

He needed a minute to settle on an approach, to find the words to handle this right.

And so when he'd helped Reid to the couch, he turned and found his way to the kitchen.

Coffee would be good for Reid.

The time it took to make coffee would be good for _him_.

And the poor, clueless people on the unsub's hit list would just have to wait.

…

A hot shower had cleared JJ's head a bit.

It did nothing to ease the guilt over what had happened to Nick, or the fear of what was to come next.

The haunting sounds of her phone call home still echoed in her head.

Noah crying.

Nat asking _why_.

But she was thinking straight enough, now, to realize that being harsh with Reid hadn't done anybody any good.

She knew he was sensitive, knew he was easily hurt.

She also knew that they'd been closer than ever lately.

She even knew – or at least suspected – that he was chemically dulling his pain these days.

And yet she'd just plain rejected him.

Sent him away.

One more spoonful of guilt to try to swallow.

Although, this one… this one she could do something about.

She wandered the small safehouse in search of her cell phone.

And when she found it stuffed between the couch cushions, she curled up where they'd been curled up together the night before, and dialed his number.

It rang four times, and then his answering service picked up.

She drew in a deep breath, rubbed her forehead, took the few seconds of his greeting message to put together a few words of her own.

"Hey, Spence… I, um… I'm sorry. I'm just… my head's not in a good place tonight... And I get that you get that, and it _does_ matter, and if you get this message and you're still up… I really could use some company."

…

"Why wouldn't you let me answer that?" Reid asked, irked.

"Because it'll be work, and we haven't settled on a game plan for that yet."

Morgan sat down on Reid's coffee table, across from him. Held out a cup of coffee.

Reid took the mug, but just looked at it.

"Coffee doesn't actually have any positive effect in terms of sobering someone up," Reid noted.

"Just drink it," Morgan told him, sighing tiredly.

Reid took a sip.

Morgan launched into what he had to say.

"I'm not gonna pretend like I can't get how you got here," he promised. "No judgment, all right?"

Reid looked up, quiet appreciation on his face.

Morgan pushed forward:

"But that this happened _to you_ more than you made it happen… that doesn't much matter at this point. Bottom line is, this has gotta end. One way or another."

"I have a plan," Reid tried to tell him.

"Unless that plan is getting professional help -- rehab -- now, tonight, it's not a good one."

"Wait… you don't understand --"

"Oh, I understand," Morgan told him, getting a little agitated. "I understand that I'm not gonna let Hankel win now. This is _not_ going to be a 'won the battle, lose the war'. We fought too hard. And you've come too far."

Reid's gaze fell to his coffee cup, and when he looked up, there was just a hint of moisture in his eyes.

"Except that I haven't," he confided quietly. "I really haven't."

Morgan just looked at him for a long moment, hit hard by the vulnerability in his eyes.

"All the more reason, then, right?" he finally said. "To get you some help."

"I wanted to be stronger than all this," Reid admitted. "We're supposed to be the heroes, not the victims."

"Nobody's going to blame you for this any more than you blame JJ for losing it that day in Michigan."

"The thing is, though, that if I tell Hotch…" Reid broke off, the fear evident.

"You don't have to tell Hotch anything about this. He'll probably have it figured out, but as long as he doesn't officially know, he doesn't have to do anything about it. You just have to go to him, tell him you need some personal time, and then get yourself to some kind of center."

"That was my plan!" Reid insisted. "Just not yet, I need to --"

"You can't stall this thing. If I have to go to Hotch to get you to get help, I will. Whether we open that can of worms is up to you."

"Morgan… I've made it this far! If I hadn't been here, would we have gotten this far with JJ's case?"

Morgan shrugged.

"Maybe not. But you've gotta let the rest of us worry about --"

"And what about tonight? Something about a letter?"

Morgan sighed, got up and paced to the other side of the room.

"We'll handle it," he said after a moment.

"I'm the handwriting analyst."

"Reid, it's a typed letter."

"But I'm good with the wording, too! I can --"

"We'll handle it," Morgan said again, firmly.

Reid stood up, approached him.

Looking him straight in the eyes.

"I've been getting by. I can do this. My plan all along was to get help as soon as JJ's safe."

"Getting by _how_, Reid?" Morgan asked, incredulous. "You think you can do better high than the rest of us can do with our heads on straight?"

Reid opened his mouth to answer rather harshly, then thought better of it.

He made himself calm. Reasonable.

"All I'm asking is to take a look at this letter. Just let me help you finish this case. I'm not going to fall apart in the --"

"Reid, you've already --"

"I'm not going to fall apart completely in the next day or two! And you're not going to forget about any of this. Just give me to the end of this case to make a clean break."

"That's stalling."

"It's not, because it's not about me. How are you going to feel if we lose JJ and I could have helped?"

Morgan shot him a warning look, shook his head a little.

"Don't give me that."

"This case could go wrong in a hundred horrible ways. You really want to wonder if it might have gone differently if you had let me help?"

Morgan fixed a stubborn gaze on him, and said nothing for a long moment.

Finally, he relented, with a few caveats.

"You go to Hotch _tonight_, you tell him that you're taking all the vacation days you have as soon as this case is wrapped. You make that commitment _tonight_."

"Okay."

"And you check in with me."

"Okay."

"A lot."

"Okay."

Morgan sighed again, rubbed the back of his neck.

"I want it on the record that this is against my better judgment."

"Noted."

"Fine. Go clean yourself up. We're already way past the deadline."

"Deadline?"

Morgan nodded, looking somber.

"Chances are, the unsub's already moved on down that list again. Chances are somebody's dead."

…

When they arrived at work, the place was dark and quiet.

But they knew that their team, at least, was around.

Somewhere.

Morgan took off for the conference room, and Reid reluctantly made his way to Hotch's office.

He found the door closed, which was odd.

He knocked, listened for a response.

He heard the muffled sound of the phone being shoved back onto its cradle, and wondered who Hotch was hanging up on so eagerly.

A moment later, Hotch came flying out of the office, nearly knocking him over.

"Hotch?!"

"Sorry," Hotch told him quickly.

Without offering any further explanation, Hotch turned and walked hurriedly away, down into the main bullpen and toward the elevators.

Reid followed him, barely keeping up.

"I, um, needed to speak to you. It's… kind of important?"

"So is this," Hotch insisted. "I have a bit of a time-sensitive situation on my hands."

"JJ?" Reid asked quickly, seeing the stress on Hotch's face.

Hotch seemed reluctant to answer. He jabbed the elevator button.

"Yes," he finally admitted.

"What happened? Is she -- Can I come with you? Did anyone get hurt? Why did --"

"Reid, I don't have time to argue with you. Prentiss is in the conference room, she's got a letter from the unsub. I need you on that."

"But is JJ --"

"We may have had a security breach. I'm taking care of it."

"I'd still rather come with you --"

"Are you our writing analyst or aren't you? I need you here."

Reid winced, surprised by Hotch's abrupt tone.

Hotch exited just as abruptly as he'd spoken, stepping onto the arriving elevator before the doors were fully open, then jabbing the button to close them again.

Reid watched him disappear.

Hoping that Morgan would believe he'd tried.

Hoping, even more, that whatever Hotch was doing would keep JJ safe.

…

JJ had nearly dozed off on the couch when she finally heard a knock on the door.

She had the thought that Reid never used to knock, that she must have made him feel even more unwelcome here than she'd thought.

But when she opened the door, it was Hotch on the other side.

"Hey," she greeted. Quietly. Uncertainly.

Feeling anxious already, because if he was here so late at night, it couldn't mean anything good.

He took her by the elbow, immediately guiding her out of the house.

"I need you to stay calm," he told her, his voice low and even. "But we need to get you out of here."

She tried to do as he asked – to _stay calm_ – as he steered her toward his car.

But her eyes darted around, searching for signs of trouble.

And she had to know what was going on.

"What happened?" She asked, folding herself into the passenger seat. "Where's Agent McDonald? Miller? The guys who were in the back?"

Hotch belted himself in and started up the car before he answered her.

"I sent them away. Jon -- Agent Miller -- he called me earlier, told me he'd been approached, by phone, with a bribe. In the millions. He refused, obviously, but the others probably got the same offer, and I'm not taking any chances."

She said nothing for a moment, a bit stunned.

This was all so sudden, it was disorienting.

She didn't know where they were going.

She had nothing with her.

Not even a jacket, and it was a cool night for the t-shirt and jeans she'd been lounging around in indoors.

She had a lot of questions, a lot of concerns.

It would have been so easy to launch into all of them, to fish for reassurance.

But if there was one person she liked to impress with her self-control, it was Hotch.

So, instead, she offered up a little bit of praise.

"Guess you had the trust fund part of the profile right."

He didn't respond, focusing on the road.

Silence reigned.

…

They'd been driving for well over an hour.

Hotch was locked in a tense silence.

JJ wondered vaguely what it was that he wasn't telling her.

Wondered, sickened by the very thought, if someone else had died.

Maybe the guards hadn't been approached with a bribe and sent away.

Maybe they'd been shot. Murdered, like Nick.

Maybe she'd have to live with that, too.

Trees and corn fields streaked by outside her window, and she realized she'd been too lost in thought to pay any attention.

She had no idea where they were now, which was less than comforting.

But then, she was with Hotch.

It'd be okay.

"So… where exactly are we going?" she asked him. "Where's this new safehouse?"

"We're almost there," he told her quietly.

Mildly annoyed that he wouldn't just tell her, she looked over at him.

Found his face a stony mask.

That was hardly cause for concern, coming from him.

But then she noticed something else.

His fingers were trembling against the steering wheel.

What the hell…?

"Hotch?"

He said nothing.

Did nothing.

Ignored her completely.

Her heart jolted to a rapid beat.

Something was_ wrong_…

"Where are we going? What happened? Why are we in your own car?" She asked insistent questions that she knew he wouldn't answer.

And he didn't.

"You're scaring me," she revealed, just a hint of panic in her tone.

He said nothing.

But he looked like he might throw up.

And suddenly she thought she just might do the same.

Shadows whipped by. Time moved too fast. She tried to process what was happening.

The car slowed to an inexplicable stop.

_In the middle of nowhere. _

And her breath caught in her throat.

"Hotch?"

Surely, he wouldn't…

He'd never…

A door slammed, somewhere in the blackness off to her right.

She flinched.

Choked on a cry.

Started shaking worse than his hands.

"Hotch…"

Her voice trembled pathetically. She didn't care.

He just _sat there_.

Still.

Silent.

She fumbled with the door handle.

Froze against her will at the sound of footsteps.

A groan of protest escaped her lips.

"Hotch?" She choked on his name.

He finally turned to face her.

The stony mask gone.

Shattered.

"He has my son."

…


	10. Chapter 9

_Author's note: __First off, I apologize for how long it took me to update. Writer's block, lack of time, etc. etc. Same old excuses, but I do apologize. _

_Secondly, you guys rock. All you reviewers, I mean. Loved the response to the last chapter. For those of you who are concerned for Hotch's character and his place in the team – all I can say is, rest assured, I love the team, I love Hotch, and I have a plan. I hope, by the end of the story, you'll feel I did his character justice. _

_On to the story! As always, I'd love to know what you think…_

**Face**

Chapter Nine

…

_Whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible._

- C. S. Lewis

…

"I have a plan."

Hotch whispered the words.

Tried to give JJ hope even as he gripped her by the arm and pulled her out of his car.

He searched her face, looked for some sign that she understood.

Her wide eyes were locked on the shadowed figure in the distance.

And he didn't think she was hearing him, let alone understanding.

"JJ?"

Nothing.

"Agent Jareau!"

Her unwavering gaze finally faltered.

The mask of fear and shock that made up her face turned toward him.

And a hundred apologies never made it past the tip of his tongue.

He wanted to talk her through it all.

Make her understand why there was no other way.

But the figure was advancing toward them now.

And there was one thing she absolutely had to hear.

"JJ, _listen-to-me_," he breathed, rushing through the words.

But she'd seen the monster coming, too.

And panic took over.

"Hotch – we have to –"

"You need to stall him –"

"— there's – there – there must be some other –"

"JJ –"

"— you can't – I can't – "

"Stall him," Hotch told her again, whispering loudly, trying to catch her panicked gaze, well aware he had her physically trapped between himself and his own car. He promised her: "We'll know where you are. We'll come for you. Try to stall him!"

"Hotch, _he's too strong_…"

Her voice broke, her eyes pleaded with him one last time.

Hotch swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat.

The footsteps were too close…

If he could just have more _time_…

If he could just have even an hour to sit and think this through…

But he didn't.

He met the eyes of the approaching monster, wanted to scream and yell and curse him.

But there was only one thing to say that was of any productive value right now.

"I walk her to the car."

It came out as an order, tinged with disgust. But free of any note of conspiracy.

The masked man considered for a moment.

Looked up.

Perhaps letting the wind decide.

Finally, he nodded.

And Hotch did what he had to do.

He walked with JJ to the waiting car, both of them now at gunpoint.

He helped her inside.

Discreetly slipped a small object under her seat.

Hoped there was something reassuring in the nod he gave her.

And then he watched them drive away.

Pondered what could be done to her in the time it would take them to get her back.

He knew only too well, just how quickly the body could be scarred, the mind shattered.

He watched the taillights fade.

Tried to hold an image of Jack in his head.

Tried to remind himself _why_.

The lights flickered out of sight.

And he turned and vomited into the ditch.

…

The drive home from the anonymous stretch of road took Hotch less than half the time of the drive out.

Haley pounced the moment he came through the door.

"You did it?" she demanded, and he noted the fear in her voice, and wondered if she was afraid he had, or hadn't.

He tried to answer her, settled for a nod.

He wanted to tell her - Yes, he'd done it, and he might never sleep again.

But he caught a brief flicker of something like sickened remorse on her face, and said nothing.

His eyes fell on the answering machine.

It was the medium through which the threat had been delivered.

The cold, hard threat that left him so little time to plan or think.

The cold, hard threat that surely wasn't a bluff.

He cursed the digital display that read: "No new calls".

"Nothing?" he asked.

"Not yet," she said quickly. And then she repeated herself, a note of hysteria entering her tone. "Not yet…"

And he reached for her, and held her, more because he'd always been _that guy_ than because he wanted to.

God only knew, he didn't deserve anyone squeezing him back right now.

He clung to her anyway, wondered how they'd survive if the call never came.

Wondered how they'd survive, even if it did.

He stared at the phone, willed it to ring.

It had been too long already.

For Jack, for JJ, for his own sanity.

It had been too damn long.

…

It took a full hour for JJ's stress management training to kick in.

How unfortunate that she'd never taken a course in 'terror management'. Or perhaps in 'staying calm while seated beside the fully armed sick bastard who tortured and nearly raped you – and wants to try again'.

He had a handgun pointed in her general direction, but his eyes were on the road.

She took note of that, tried to figure out how to use it.

That he'd been silent thus far was her saving grace.

If she didn't look at him and he didn't speak, she could almost pretend the reality of the moment was something it wasn't.

She could almost pretend it was Reid sitting there.

His gentle hands turning the wheel.

Not the hands that had groped her in the darkened prison that had once been her bedroom.

Not the hands that had torn her shirt, pinned her arms above her head…

Ones of those hands reached for her now. Slid beneath the blanket of fine hair that covered the back of her neck, felt for the scar of his handiwork.

She jerked away, shivered involuntarily, forced a calming breath into her lungs, forced herself to focus on the reality of the weapon trained on her.

Wondered about the likelihood of surviving a jump from a car that was racing down a country road.

Reid would know.

She didn't.

She reached back to where his hand had been and rubbed the back of her neck herself.

Like wiping off a kiss.

And she realized something, struck with the thought as she brought her arm back to her side.

The idiot had left her hands untied _again_.

Made the same mistake twice.

She'd have to take full advantage of that.

…

"It's not much to go on," Reid informed Morgan and Prentiss apologetically. "It's basically what we'd expect from what we already know about him. The language is cold, clinical. He has a singular purpose and he doesn't hesitate. He doesn't try to avoid taking responsibility. Probably doesn't feel any guilt."

Reid looked up from the unsub's letter, met each of their gazes in turn. And shrugged.

He added:

"There's nothing specific. No 'tell' that's going to help us at this point."

"It was worth a shot," Morgan offered, sounding supportive.

"Back to basics," Prentiss noted, sighing, swinging a pile of folders from a nearby chair up onto the round table.

It was well past the time they'd all have normally quit for the day, but under the circumstances, between the unsub's deadline and JJ's personal involvement, sleep seemed insignificant.

Still, Reid found himself rubbing his eyes – with less than steady hands – while he read over Morgan's notes from his and Prentiss' second round of interviews with the unsub's first two victims.

He wasn't sure what he was looking for.

They had every reason to believe the unsub's choice of victims was dependent entirely on chance and psychosis.

And yet he found himself waiting for some kind of connection to jump out at him.

They'd gone too long without a break in this case.

Something had to give.

It wasn't until nearly the last page of scribbled notes that something caught his eye.

It might have been wishful thinking, but…

"This Amanda Minson," he started, a bit keyed up, and Morgan and Prentiss looked up from their own work. "She worked as a receptionist at a medical clinic in Pennsylvania?"

"That's what she said," Morgan confirmed, shrugging. "Mentioned it when she talked about treating her burns herself."

"JJ's from Pennsylvania!" Reid told them both, trying not to sound too excited. "If there's a prior connection between his victims? Then there might be a prior connection with him, too."

"A lot of people are from Pennsylvania," Prentiss cautioned, and Morgan nodded in agreement.

"We want to find this guy, too, but this goes beyond 'long shot', Reid."

Reid gave them a look, less than satisfied, and stubbornly went right back to what he'd been doing.

When Morgan spoke up, Reid could hear in his tone that he was just humoring him.

"This guy did focus his threats on people from JJ's hometown. Her family, Nicholas Burke. Let's talk it out. We have any reason to believe Marlene Hoffert spent any time in Pennsylvania?"

"Did you ask her that?" Reid asked quickly, and Morgan's eyes narrowed into a look that read 'who are you kidding?'

"Not that specifically, no. We did some standard bio stuff, but we had – have – every reason to believe her past has nothing to do with this."

Reid was barely listening, flipping through to Morgan's notes on Marlene Hoffert.

"From Nebraska," he murmured, as much to himself as to Morgan and Prentiss, disappointed. And then his eye caught something else. "What's this?"

Morgan leaned over to see what Reid was pointing at. A random notation.

"College of Fine Arts," Morgan read aloud. "She mentioned going to one, half way through a break down about why bad things happen to good, hardworking people."

"That doesn't sound like a stand-alone college," Prentiss noted.

Reid nodded at her, grateful for any hint of agreement.

"Not without an identifying name. It sounds like a division of a university."

"Like the University of Pittsburgh?" Prentiss suggested, catching on.

Reid found himself actually smiling at her.

"Precisely."

"JJ's old stomping grounds?" Morgan broke in. "Easy enough to find out." He started to step away, announced: "I'll check in with Amanda Minson. Find out exactly where in Pennsylvania she lived and worked."

"I'll try Marlene Hoffert," Prentiss offered.

Reid nodded at them distractedly, dialing his own phone.

"Speak!" Garcia's voice boomed into his ear.

"Garcia, it's Reid."

"Lazy-Boy!" Garcia teased. "Aren't you literally down the hall?"

Reid pushed forward, ignoring her humor.

"I need you to look up student registration records at the University of Pittsburgh. And employee records, too, if you can. Can you do that?"

"Honey, I can put your name on that list if you want me to. Who am I looking for?"

"Marlene Hoffert, likely a student, and Amanda Minson, likely an employee."

"The first victims?"

"Yes."

Reid could hear the clipped tone to his own voice, and it seemed Garcia must have heard it, too, because she didn't try to question him or banter with him.

In the moment that she went silent, presumably working away, Morgan and Prentiss both appeared at Reid's side.

Prentiss shrugged apologetically.

"Couldn't get ahold of her."

"At this time of night? I figured as much. I got Garcia on it," Reid shared.

Then he noticed the hint of disbelief on Morgan's face.

"The clinic Amanda worked at… It was a student health center," Morgan informed them. "At U of Pittsburgh."

The three agents had just enough time to exchange wide-eyed glances before Garcia came back on the line.

"Reid? Congrats. Both your girls are on the list."

…

It had been just over an hour since Hotch had watched those flickering taillights fading away.

Just over an hour later, and it felt like days.

The fear for his son and the guilt over what he'd had to do to JJ, it was all blending together.

Maybe he hadn't been home enough. Maybe he deserved this.

Maybe they wouldn't even get Jack back.

Maybe it was all for nothing.

Maybe everything that got him through the rough days was gone.

Maybe he'd never feel warm again.

Maybe he didn't deserve to.

Maybe this was what it felt like to go crazy.

Maybe this was what an unsub --

A tone rang out from his cell phone. Interrupted his dark thoughts. Hit him like a ton of bricks.

"Aaron…?" Haley sounded ready to break.

"Someone sent me a photo," he told her, flipping the phone open.

He accessed the picture, and it told him everything he needed to know.

He didn't even speak to Haley.

He just took off for the front door, and out into their yard, and down the street.

His heart pounded in his ears.

He could barely hear Haley calling out from behind him.

There was a hedge up ahead.

And just beyond it… hopefully, just beyond it… just beyond it was supposed to be…

Jack.

And there he was.

Exactly where he'd been left.

Exactly where he'd been in the picture.

Crying, miserable.

But right there in front of him.

Safe.

_Perfect_.

Hotch ran to him, scooped him up, pressed his little body against his own chest, and let the warmth of his living, breathing being sink in.

Haley all but crashed into them, wrapped her arms around them both.

And suddenly half of the nightmare was over, and Hotch would have liked to let it end there.

He would have liked to lock all of his doors and hide away.

Just the three of them. Warm. Safe. Together.

If it hadn't been one of their own in peril… if he hadn't been the one to put her there…

If that hadn't been the case, maybe he wouldn't have left his family for days.

Maybe he would have been the husband and father Haley always wanted him to be, starting right now.

God only knew, he didn't want to face his professional life.

Not after what he'd done.

He didn't want to let his family out of his sight.

Not after what they'd almost lost.

But life was cruel.

And the other half of the nightmare was almost as personal as this one.

And he had to go.

"I'm sorry…" he murmured, his voice thick, his arms not willing to let them go yet.

Haley's overflowing eyes met his.

"I know," she told him.

Not sure she understood, he clarified:

"I don't mean about this happening – although I am, too, about that, but I --"

"I know," Haley told him again, nodding meaningfully.

And he realized that she had understood him perfectly the first time.

"I love you both," he murmured. "You know I love you both…"

"I know," she said again.

"I'm going to have a uniform come stay with you. I don't think he'll be back, but just to be safe…"

She nodded, and he kissed her, and then he kissed the top of his son's head.

And he started guiding them toward home, on shaky, unreliable legs.

When they got there, she headed for the house, and he found himself heading, on something like autopilot, to his car.

"Aaron!" she called out, and he turned to find her fighting a new brand of tears. "If you find her… tell her that I… I just… I need you to tell her…" She shook her head, couldn't find the words. "I don't know what to tell her."

Hotch just nodded, and got into his car.

He didn't know, either.

…

"It doesn't make sense." Morgan said, not for the first time. "This guy is cold and clinical. We got that straight from the horse's mouth. Everything points to it. And now we're saying this is personal?"

"Not necessarily," Reid insisted. "We always thought he was doing this because of some irrational belief in something meant to be. What would feel more fated than three of the women he watched from afar in college suddenly appearing on his television, in his own backyard?"

"It's a hell of a coincidence," Gideon cautioned, having just been filled in on the new information.

"But it happened. All three women were there. At the same time. And now they're all here. It's a coincidence, but there's no denying it."

"It would have been overpowering for him," Gideon noted quietly.

"It also explains why it seems there really are only three victims," Prentiss offered. "No local hospitals or clinics have any record of similar burns, and looking for unmotivated break-ins gave us nothing."

Gideon turned to face Garcia.

"Get in touch with U of Pittsburgh. Records, people. I don't care who you have to wake up. Find out exactly what years JJ was a student there. Then the other two women. Work with that time window. Search for males in that period. Young men with straight As, who never needed to apply for a single scholarship, who studied music or science. Cross-reference those names with men who have since relocated to Virginia. Prioritize according to proximity to us."

Gideon finally finished speaking, and Garcia nodded jerkily, and nearly walked into the doorframe on her way out, desperately trying to commit all of that to memory for the short walk to her own office.

Gideon turned back to Reid and Prentiss and Morgan.

"We need to call JJ. See if she remembers anyone from her school days who fits the profile."

"You won't be able to do that," a familiar voice broke in.

They all looked up to find Hotch in the doorway.

And they all noted his ashen face, his distraught eyes.

"What happened?" Prentiss asked, while the others only stared.

"He got to her?" Morgan followed up after a moment.

Their terror-struck eyes – Reid's, in particular – almost broke Hotch down.

But he was who he was, and so he didn't let himself turn and run.

"This unsub took my son." He detached himself, explained it all inharmoniously simply. "He threatened his life. He wouldn't have hesitated any more than he hesitated when he shot Nicholas Burke." He paused. Hating to continue. Finally added, raising his weary eyes: "And what he wants from JJ isn't her life. And there was very little time."

It was painful, to watch the play of emotions on their faces. From sympathy to horror, as it dawned on them what he had done.

"Hotch…" Reid said his name, almost seemed to be pleading with him even after the fact, to not let it be true.

Hotch couldn't face him, and instead addressed all of them again.

"I'm telling you the rest of this not as an excuse, but as information for you to use: I insisted on walking her to his car, and I was able to place a tracking device under her seat. Out of sight. I took the device from here. I have the unit specs. We can get Garcia on it immediately, and get JJ out of there as quickly as humanly possible."

Hotch could feel the heat of tears in his eyes.

Reid looked like he was going to be sick.

No one said anything for a long moment, and the silence was absolutely unbearable.

Finally, Gideon stepped forward. Ready to take over.

"This doesn't matter now."

"_Doesn't matter now_?!!" Reid half cried and half shouted, too many emotions to name exploding to the surface.

Gideon shot him a warning look.

"Spencer --"

"You knew what he wanted!" Reid accused. His eyes on Hotch. He added, quietly and brokenly: "You know what he's going to do to her."

Tears filled Emily's eyes, Morgan clenched his jaw.

Hotch never opened his mouth to defend himself.

Gideon never let his focus drift from Reid.

"You want to hate him?" Gideon asked him, his tone matter-of-fact. "You want to yell at him, you want to break down? You can do that, or you can help JJ. That's the choice you're making right now."

Reid let that sink in for a moment. Took in a deep breath. Visibly collected himself.

"Let's get Garcia tracking that car," he told them.

…

What JJ was about to do was nothing short of terrifying.

It could kill her.

Break her bones.

Mutilate her body.

Even the best case scenario would likely hurt like hell.

But it was still the lesser of two evils.

And so she found herself watching and waiting.

Gauging time and distance out the window.

Noting the angle of his gun.

Choosing her moment.

Waiting… waiting…

Until it was _now or never._

And she went for it.

Right hand going for his gun.

Left hand grabbing for the steering wheel.

They fought for control.

Raced toward the base of a towering tree.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

And the moment of impact registered as a series of sounds, one on top of the other.

Metal crunching.

An airbag rushing to meet her.

The echo of a gunshot.

And a hollow snapping sound that sent her mind reeling back to eleventh grade, when Sandi Ledrowski's cleats had come down hard on her wrist and snapped the bone.

When her cloudy mind started to clear, she wasn't sure if she'd lost consciousness or not.

She wasn't quite sure exactly how badly she was injured, either. Her head throbbed. Something warm was dripping down her forehead and into her eye. The pain in her left arm screamed for her attention.

But what little brain power she had left was focused elsewhere.

Listening.

The whole world seemed to be trembling, and it had gone black, too, without the aid of the car headlights.

She couldn't see him, and so she strained to hear him.

Praying she wouldn't hear him move.

Praying she wouldn't even hear him breathe.

For a long, merciful moment it seemed maybe he was out.

Hope creeped up on her.

But then one muttered word brought her crashing down.

"_Bitch."_

…


	11. Chapter 10

_Author's note: My apologies for the ridiculously long delay between updates. This chapter just did not want to get written. It's a little on the long side, but I really didn't want to break it into two sections, so pull up a chair and bear with me. _

_Everyone who reviewed, and everyone who messaged me to try to get me moving with this – thank you. Feedback really does mean a lot, and I'd love to hear from you regarding this one. _

**Face**

Chapter Ten

…

_Peace has its victories. But it takes brave men and women to win them._

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

…

Things were finally looking up!

Garcia was grinning like a fool, and she knew it. And it felt good.

Her extensively cross-referenced records search had yielded a mere three names.

Surely, good old fashioned police work and the wonder of the alibi could narrow it down to one.

The heartless little bastard was as good as caught!

And with any luck, she'd even get to be the one to tell JJ!

She was printing DMV records and mentally patting herself on the back when a stampede of BAU agents plowed into her little office.

"Run this," Gideon instructed, handing her what looked to be the specs on a particularly high-tech tracking device.

Garcia complied absentmindedly, clicking her way through to the needed software, still smiling, still focused on her successful search.

"I'm glad you're all present," she told them brightly, eyes on the screen. "Behold the power of cross-referencing!"

She grabbed at the pages shooting out of her printer and swirled her chair around to face them.

"Cheer up!" She punched Reid in the arm gently, glanced at the others. "Why so glum? We've just about got this guy."

No one spoke, and they all looked agonizingly tense.

"What's wrong?" She questioned.

And then a thought hit her.

And with her heart in her throat, she asked reluctantly:

"What am I tracking?"

Reid opened his mouth to say something, but Gideon cut him off.

"He's got JJ."

He spoke simply, and it took a moment for the words to penetrate.

It didn't make sense.

JJ was safe.

JJ was in a _safe_house.

This wasn't supposed to happen…

"How?" she finally asked, hearing the slight tremor in her own voice.

No one spoke.

No one moved.

Finally, Hotch reached out and took the papers she was holding.

He glanced through them, quickly discarded two and held up the third.

"Him," he told them simply. "Alexander Burgess. He's the right height."

No one questioned him.

The others seemed to be up to speed.

But Garcia's head was spinning.

What the hell had happened? Hotch had seen this guy?

"I think I missed a page somewhere," she started, but before anyone could respond, an alert tone rang out from the computer, and they all turned to face it.

The screen displayed a glowing dot on a map.

Reid quickly interpreted the image.

"That's way out Route 29," he blurted out.

"Let's go," Morgan said unceremoniously, already turning to head for the door.

"Hang on," Prentiss called to him, and then she turned back to Garcia. "Can we take a portable monitor with us --"

"She can keep an eye out, call us on our cells!" Reid insisted, starting to follow Morgan.

"Wait," Garcia called to them, bringing them back a second time. "I don't… I think… I don't know what exactly this means…" she started, her eyes glued to the screen. Then her tone quieter: "I'm not sure I want to know what this means… but… it's not moving."

She turned back to face them, saw surprise register on their faces.

"They're stopped somewhere?" Gideon questioned.

"They're in the middle of nowhere," Hotch noted, confused.

"Maybe he found the device, got rid of it," Prentiss suggested.

"Or he switched cars," Gideon offered up.

Reid looked at them, fear shining in his eyes, and added solemnly:

"Maybe they crashed."

The thought sobered them all for a moment.

But Morgan's quiet words hit them harder:

"Maybe he couldn't wait."

For a moment, no one said anything.

Struck.

Sickened.

And then suddenly Gideon sprang them all back into action.

"Go!" He ordered, ushering them all to the door. "Go. Let's go!"

He followed them out, calling back over his shoulder:

"If that thing moves, you call! Immediately!"

And then he was gone with the rest of them.

And Garcia sat staring at the glowing red dot on the screen, wondering at its stillness, until the image blurred beyond a haze of tears.

…

They were on the move, crossing the parking lot, before anyone voiced the question Gideon had been preparing himself for.

"Who's going to call it in?" Prentiss asked, looking around at the others. "Normally it'd be JJ, but…?"

"No one," Gideon said definitively.

Reid stopped cold.

"What? Gideon, he's… he's got her out there somewhere! We need all the help we can get!"

"What're you thinkin'?" Morgan asked, and by now they'd all stopped moving.

"Hotch was right," Gideon told them, starting to move forward again, forcing them to walk with him. "Burgess doesn't want JJ's life. But if we fill the area with people looking to lock him up and take her away from him… that might change his game plan. Make him decide if she's not his, she's not going to be anyone's."

They all went silent for a moment, considering.

"But just the five of us?!" Morgan finally said, clearly not happy with the idea.

"For now," Gideon told him. "Let's find out what we're dealing with."

"And what if she's already hurt?" Prentiss demanded. "We could have paramedics with us. For all we know it could save her life."

"For all we know, it could kill her," Gideon shot back. "_He_ could kill her. If he doesn't see us coming, she's got a better shot."

"How can we --" Reid started to say, but Gideon cut him off, fixed him with a stare.

"Do you trust me?" he asked. When Reid said nothing, he asked again, with calculated feeling: "Reid, do you trust me?"

It worked.

Reid acquiesced. Less than thrilled, but respectful of his mentor.

And perhaps relieved to have the responsibility for the choice taken out of his hands.

Morgan and Prentiss followed suit, somewhat reluctantly following Reid toward their vehicle.

Hotch stepped up from where he'd been walking behind the rest of them.

"If I didn't believe there was truth in what you told them, I wouldn't let you do this," Hotch told Gideon quietly. "But we both know you can't protect me forever."

Gideon moved to join the others, said over his shoulder:

"We'll see."

…

Reid used to say that fear was a survival tool.

He'd chattered about the subject rather eagerly, on some particular jet ride, a long while back.

Fear was just the stimuli that produced effective action, he'd shared, and she'd gotten the feeling that it was something he'd only recently had to rationalize for himself.

At the time, JJ had thought that was all it was. A rationalization. Justification for a feeling that deep down inside, he wished he didn't feel.

She wondered now, though, if he was right.

If fear was a survival tool.

She hurt.

Like there was a jackhammer in her head and the strongest of jaws locked onto her left arm and something sharp swimming through her veins.

She wanted nothing more than to pass out.

It would have been so easy to let herself crash.

Her vision was already swimming, the world turning on its axis right in front of her eyes.

It would have been so easy…

But fear kept her moving. Struggling her way through a tall corn field.

Fear had made her leap from the car a split second after realizing that her captor was alive and well and awake.

Fear had gotten her enough of a head start to run and hide while he struggled to get out of the mangled vehicle.

How was it that fear was the stuff of survival and also the stuff of nightmares?

She couldn't take much more in the nightmare department.

For a moment she entertained the idea that maybe she was dreaming now, as a farmhouse suddenly appeared up ahead on her left.

(Had that been there a moment ago? She wasn't sure…)

She could barely make it out in the moonlight, but there it was.

And she cut a path through the corn field toward it, eyes glued to it as if it might betray her and disappear.

She barely felt – barely even noticed – the way that the corn stalks scraped against her already bleeding arms, her inexplicably wet face.

(Was she crying? She hadn't realized…)

The house was shrouded in complete darkness. She could see this, as she got closer, and for a moment, her heart sank.

But it was late… wasn't it? She'd lost all sense of time, but it was certainly dark, and it had already been late when Hotch arrived at the safehouse, and she didn't think it had been morning since then.

(Had it? She just couldn't be sure…)

If it was late, that was hopeful.

They were probably sleeping, but they were probably there.

And it wasn't that far now.

If she could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and a cruel hand never grabbed her from behind…

She kept moving, struggling along -- until a new horror assaulted her senses --

Somewhere, out there in the unrelenting darkness --

_A dog barked_.

She froze.

Grabbed instinctively onto a corn stalk, as if that might somehow help her.

The barking continued, loud and deep.

A big dog.

Not a little yipper.

And by the sound of it, he was somewhere between the corn field and the house.

JJ released the breath she'd been holding in an odd sound something between a whimper and a chuckle, and finally let herself sink to the ground.

One monster behind her. The other in front.

The world had to be kidding her.

But there was no use.

Even fear could only take a girl so far.

She heard a car rumble by on the road that ran along the cornfield, off to her right.

Her head told her to run for it, get their attention.

But her weary body refused to move.

Maybe tomorrow.

Maybe, if she lasted that long hidden beneath the corn stalks out here, she'd flag down a car in the welcome light of day.

Maybe not.

Maybe darkness would envelope her before then.

Maybe this was the end.

And maybe…

Maybe that was okay.

…

Reid watched the corn fields race by outside his window, trying not to compare the adjacent farm house to Tobias Hankel's.

He wasn't sure he could do this.

It was bad enough that he hadn't had a dose in a while. (Though he did have one in his bag, if it came to that out here.)

But he wasn't prepared for this.

He shut his eyes, tried to breathe evenly.

It was too much.

Too painfully familiar.

JJ was out there somewhere being hunted by a cruel bastard named Alexander Burgess.

The stakes were the highest of the high.

And still, he couldn't focus.

Couldn't stop remembering.

Was it possible that he actually smelled fish burning?

Would Gideon be willing to pull over and let him vomit on the side of the road, if it came to that?

The car suddenly stopped, as if Gideon had some kind of telepathy.

Reid opened his eyes, spotted the damaged car pressed up against a tree, fifty feet in front of them.

By the time he managed to disentangle himself from his seatbelt and get his rubbery legs in working order, the others were already out of their own vehicle and racing toward the damaged one.

"She was in the passenger seat," Hotch was announcing when Reid got close enough to hear.

Prentiss was bent down by the passenger side door, examining the seat.

"Blood," she told the others simply. "But not that much of it."

"Two sets of footprints, and they don't walk the same path," Gideon called out from several feet away, examining the ground with his flashlight. "He'd either have a hold of her or have her walking at gunpoint in front of him."

"So she got away?" Reid questioned.

Morgan approached the side of the car, turned to take in his surroundings, getting into roleplay mode.

"Okay, so I'm JJ, I'm hurt, I've just pissed this guy off royally and I know it," he said, as much to himself as the others. "Where do I go?"

"You run," Reid told him. It felt right to him. "If he's awake too… fear dictates that you just run."

Gideon examined the footprints again.

"We split up. Hotch with me. You three stick together. Keep in touch; we've still got cell phone signals out here. And be alert! He's out here too."

He stopped, looked at each of the three younger agents in turn, summed up:

"We need to find her before he does."

…

"You okay?"

"Hmmm?" Reid looked up, found Morgan looking him over intently.

"You all right?"

"Fine."

"You don't look it."

Prentiss had been several steps ahead of them, but she turned back and approached, taking in the looks on their faces.

"Corn fields?" She asked, her tone sympathetic.

It seemed they could both see straight through Reid, and his gaze hit the ground.

He wanted to give in…

He wanted to get the hell out of here…

"I just, um…"

He almost said it out loud.

"Morgan, maybe I shouldn't be… Maybe this is just…"

He choked back the words.

It was comfort and guilt versus torment and pride.

Why was that always the choice he had to make lately?

It was too much… even when he wasn't walking the landscape of his nightmares…

His cell phone rang, interrupting his inner battle, and he snatched it up gratefully.

Hoping, not for entirely selfless reasons, that it was somehow, mercifully, already over.

"Gideon?" He answered eagerly, having glanced at the call display. "Did you find her?!"

"We're about a quarter mile east of the car," Gideon told him. "There are two distinct paths beaten into the corn fields. They're both nearby, somewhere. We need you three here."

Gideon hung up without saying anything else.

"They're, um… they think they're on the right track," Reid told Morgan and Prentiss, snapping his cell phone shut. "They need…" His voice trailed off as he noticed he had a message.

"They need… what?" Morgan questioned, but Reid ignored him, accessing the message and putting his phone to his ear.

It was JJ's voice that greeted him.

Calm.

Safe.

Calling him 'Spence'.

Looking for company.

Wanting him nearby.

And he was frozen for just a second, before he snapped the phone shut angrily, before he felt tears spring to his eyes.

He should have checked sooner.

He should have been there…

"Reid, Man, talk to me," Morgan told him. "If you need to get out of here, no one's going to blame you for --"

"No." Reid shook his head emphatically, his determination renewed. "No, I'm okay. Let's go."

…

It never crossed Hotch's mind that it was a bad idea for him to be out here in the corn field alone.

He'd had no concern for his own safety when separating from Gideon so as to be able to follow the two diverging paths.

He was well-trained, well-armed, and fairly certain he'd deserve anything he couldn't handle.

It didn't worry him that he was out here alone with a madman.

But when he came across a bruised and bloodied JJ huddled in a tiny clearing of her own making, he quickly realized there was another reason he shouldn't be looking for her alone.

_She didn't trust him anymore._

She backed away, crying out in pain or protest (or both) as she moved.

"JJ --

"Don't!" Sheer desperation in her tone. "Please…"

"I'm sorry…" His stomach rolled, looking her over. "You have no idea, but you have to let me help you -- that arm --"

"No, I can't… you can't do this, Hotch, please…"

"JJ, Jack's home safe…" He wondered if she was even hearing him. Somewhere, a dog was making its presence known, and with each successive bark, she flinched. "And I'm here to help," he continued. Experience was the only thing keeping his tone slow and even. "I can't say how sorry I feel. I just want to get you to a hospital. Your arm, it's…"

God, that was an unnatural angle. Undoubtedly broken.

He tried to reach out for her, but she backed further away from him – and right out of the corn field, next to the road.

If she backed away any further, she'd be in the path of oncoming traffic.

"JJ…" He swallowed hard. "JJ, listen to me…"

But he didn't know what to say.

He watched her quietly for a second or two, trying to think clearly enough to weigh his options.

And then, mercifully, Reid and Morgan and Emily appeared from behind him.

"JJ…" Reid breathed her name, and Hotch could have cried at the brief flicker of hope that crossed JJ's face.

Both Reid and Emily started toward JJ.

But then she continued to back away, even from them.

"JJ, look at me," Emily instructed her, feeling a sense of déjà vu. "Look at me, it's Emily. And Reid, JJ. It's over."

"It's just me…" Reid murmured.

But JJ stared them down, tears mixing with the blood from a cut above her eye.

"It's just me," Reid told her again, holding up his gentle, shaky fingers.

And her eyes stopped flitting nervously about and settled on his.

And her voice was just a broken whisper:

"Does he have your mom?" She sniffled, her face crumbling with new tears. "What if he has your mom? I can't…"

Morgan spoke up as Reid nearly broke down, his tone as solid as ever:

"JJ, this is us. All of us. He took Jack and only Jack, and Jack's back home safe and sound. We just want the same for you."

He couldn't have sounded more confident and trustworthy.

But still she hesitated.

Emily started to say something, but Reid stepped out in front of her.

Realizing what JJ needed.

It might have been a bad idea, with her as disoriented as she looked.

But it was the only action he could think of, to hand her the sense of control that had been ripped away.

He offered her his weapon.

Held it out, aimed at him. Holding the barrel, offering her the grip.

And she looked at it like she wasn't sure it was really there.

Finally, she took a ginger step forward. And snatched it away from him.

And when it was in her hand, and they stood there, tense and quiet, waiting to see how she'd react, her rigid shoulders slumped, and she looked at them remorsefully, and her body all but pitched forward, half walking and half falling toward Reid.

He barely caught her, and they both ended up on the ground.

"I'm sorry…" She was speaking into his shirt. "I thought… I just… I couldn't…"

"It's okay," he assured her, and he took note of the fact that Gideon had just joined them.

"I lost the track," Gideon told them, and then, eyeing JJ, "His track, I guess that is."

And Hotch and Prentiss exchanged a look for a long moment, remembering that Alexander Burgess was still out here somewhere.

Behind the rest of them, Morgan slammed his cell phone shut, cursing under his breath.

Heads snapped around to look at him.

"There's a pileup on Highway Four," he muttered. "And reaction times out here aren't great anyway."

"What did they tell you?" Gideon asked.

Morgan glanced down at JJ and Reid, then raised his eyes to the others. Hating this.

"Ambulance could be fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty."

Right around the time everyone was sighing over that, Reid took note of the fact that JJ was squirming in his arms. The adrenaline gone, the reality of the pain settling in. Her body all but vibrating with the effort to simply endure.

Emily must have seen it, too, because she knelt down, looked JJ over regretfully.

"God… JJ, I don't have so much as an aspirin."

And suddenly it hit Reid that he had a choice to make.

Because he _did_ have so very much more than an aspirin.

He could risk his pride and his reputation. Severely damage his career. Let everyone see just how weak he was. And in the process, bring JJ some relief now.

Or he could let her wait like this for twenty minutes.

And never look her in the eye again.

"I do," he said aloud, in response to Emily's statement.

"Do what?" Emily asked, confused.

"Reid…" Morgan said his name quietly, uncertainly, realizing what he was thinking.

Reid wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a warning or not, but he met Emily's eyes and gestured to JJ's prone form.

"Here," he told her, transferring JJ's weight off of him as gently as possible, leaning her into the crook of Emily's arm.

And then he was up and moving, and he was halfway back to the car – to his bag – to his _dose_ – before he realized that Morgan was right behind him.

"You can't stop me," Reid told him determinedly.

"I'm not trying to stop you, Reid," Morgan told him. "I'm just along for the ride. You gave up your gun. And there's a damn killer out here."

…

"Hey, you with me?"

Emily was tapping her face, prompting for a response.

And JJ was trying to come up with one when a new voice made itself heard.

"Jennifer?! _Jenn-i-fer_!!!..."

It was oddly human, oddly saddened. Something of a wail.

Still, it hit hard.

Not one member of her team had called her by her first name past the day they'd met her.

And there was only one other person out here.

Hotch and Gideon and Emily were pulling their weapons.

She saw this, before she saw _him_.

Wandering up, limping badly.

Bleeding.

_Crying_.

"You don't understand…" he was whimpering, staring down the barrels of three guns.

He was utterly defeated, standing before them.

Utterly pathetic, too.

"Stop right there," Gideon was ordering. "Freeze! Get your hands above your head."

"He was armed," Hotch whispered, even though there was no weapon to be seen.

"Alexander, right?" Gideon called out.

And Alexander Burgess sniffled, rubbed his nose with a shaky hand.

"You just don't understand…" he said again. "This isn't me, this is just what's supposed to happen, it's supposed to be --"

"You're making a choice," Gideon told him. "That's you. You're an educated man, Alex. Can I call you Alex?"

"I _am_ educated!" Burgess shot back. "And I remember what I learned! Euripides, he said: 'I have been versed in the reasonings of men, but Fate is stronger than anything I have known'…"

JJ could only imagine the small smile that had to be crossing Gideon's face at this, as she turned her head toward Emily, and whispered to her:

"Help me up."

As Emily shot her a you've-got-to-be-kidding-me look, and JJ shook her head and grasped her arm, Gideon was returning fire with fire:

"And Emerson said 'the bitterest tragic element in life is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny'."

"No, I remember," Burgess started, and then paused, trying to find the words. "I remember 'Fate rules the affairs of mankind with no recognizable order'! Seneca!"

"You remember what you want to remember," Gideon accused. "You see what you want to see."

JJ was nearly on her feet now, though undeniably leaning heavily on Emily.

It meant a lot, to face him standing.

It meant a lot to be strong while he cried.

He turned his attention directly to her, now that they were closer to eye-to-eye, though still a good fifteen feet apart.

"Do you even remember me?" Burgess pleaded. "Do you even realize how incredible it is that we all ended up here?"

"Fate had a little help," JJ called to him, her voice getting stronger with each word.

He took a step forward, and her finger tightened around the trigger of Reid's gun.

"Another step and I put a bullet through your skull," Hotch called out, venom in his voice. "Maybe a few for good measure."

And JJ found herself wondering if Hotch's trigger finger was itching, too, and then wondering if that meant she cared. Wondering if she was or wasn't supposed to.

Wondering how much longer her legs would hold out.

"Where's your weapon?" Gideon called out to Burgess. "You lay down your gun, we can talk."

But Burgess only returned his watery gaze to JJ.

And she could see, looking at him, that there was a mirrored expression on his face.

Like he was ready to break, too.

"_Please_…"

He begged her.

And it was the best therapy in the world, to stand where she stood, protected on all sides, and look him in the eye.

"Sorry," she called out, rubbing salt in his wounds with a weak but very deliberate smile of triumph.

And then Hotch got in on the game.

"I was thinking I should make some calls, have your cell mates misinformed," Hotch called out. "Share that, as it turns out, in addition to your recent crimes, you were also accused of pedophilia. Child rapists tend to be paid back in full."

JJ released a heavy sigh, and tried to keep her head from lolling back against Emily, tried to keep her eyes locked on Burgess as she told him:

"Karma really is a bitch."

And it felt good, despite the radiating pain, despite the mental wounds that might never fully mend.

It felt right.

It felt _over_.

Until Burgess went for his gun.

…

"This is going to be fine," Reid told Morgan, as they walked back from the car, drug in hand. "It is. This is okay, it's… it's really meant for medicinal purposes." He rambled on, reminding himself of the facts as much as he was convincing Morgan. "Dilaudid is just a trade name for Hydromorphone… it's an incredibly potent painkiller, particularly intravenously --"

"_Shit."_

A muttered curse from Morgan cut Reid off, made him lift his head, to take in the roadside scene in the distance.

"That's him!" Reid blurted out unnecessarily.

But Morgan was already running.

And Reid ran, too.

Charging forward, unarmed. Too far away to stop what happened next.

He saw it in slow motion.

Burgess, reaching for his gun.

JJ, aiming hers.

And he had just enough time to think -- _don't do it - don't do it - don't put yourself through that --_

Just enough time to wish that someone else would take the shot for her.

Too little time to stop her, before she fired.

…

She could have sworn she felt the bullet leave her gun, felt it slam into his body.

And as he stumbled backward and began to fall, she had the odd, odd thought that she wished that someone would catch him.

No one did.

Everyone quickly turned their focus from his fallen form back to her.

A shaky arm came around her.

And then Reid was there, a syringe in his hand, and someone was lowering her to the ground.

"Wait," Gideon's voice echoed, from somewhere above and behind her.

"She needs this," Reid told him dismissively, not even looking up.

"She also needs to hear this," Gideon insisted. "You all do."

He waited until he had their attention, then launched into it.

Quiet, intense.

Pure Gideon.

"This is our last chance. To make a decision. To keep the secrets we need to keep." He paused, waved his hands to indicate Reid and Hotch. "These are… two good men. Driven by the actions of two men who can not be called good." He paused again, took a deep breath. "Someone is going to be horribly victimized tomorrow. And someone else the day after that." He met Hotch's gaze, then Reid's. "They need your minds."

He kept talking for a moment or two.

Something about burning the rule book for the greater good.

Something about not losing another team.

JJ thought she heard Emily agree, thought she caught Morgan's heavy nod out of the corner of her eye.

She realized, in her attempt to look at each of them, that it had been Hotch that caught and cradled her, breaking the fall of her inevitable collapse.

Her mind wasn't sure what to do with that.

But it had to count for something.

She met his dark eyes above her, saw the torment in them, before he pulled his gaze away.

And then Morgan was saying something about Reid and rehab, and Hotch was struggling to say something without breaking, and Reid was brokenly apologizing to Gideon, or Hotch, or the world.

And behind them, the man she'd just killed was turning the ground red.

She lay there, wondering if it was possible for the mind to blow a fuse.

Wondering if she'd always feel the strange mixture of relief and horror at the memory of this moment.

Wondering how she was supposed to be Agent Jareau after all this.

Wondering how she was supposed to be anything at all.

She felt a sharp pinch in her good arm, and had time to comfort herself with just one last reasonably coherent thought before she drifted into a welcome oblivion.

Spence would understand.

…


	12. Epilogue

_Author's note: And here our story comes to an end. __I was amazed by the response to the last chapter – I've never received reviews quite like that before, discussing the story as if it were the show. Obviously, I had a sense of where I was going and what I was doing, and for the most part, I've stuck to my plan. But with that said, I took into account everything that everyone had to say, and you all made good points. _

_In any case, it's been a joy, folks. I plan to start something new soon, and I hope some or all of you will read and enjoy whatever comes next. Thanks again for reading and reviewing! There's nothing like having an intelligent and thoughtful 'audience' to keep a fic writer feeling rewarded and encouraged. _

_And now, the end. _

**Face**

Epilogue

…

_The maximum of understanding is to understand that it cannot be understood._

- Soren Kierkegaard

…

Aaron holds Jack's hand when they walk down stairs.

On the way up, Jack gets to walk alone.

A trip, a stumble, a skinned knee – that's okay.

But a fall is something else entirely.

Sometimes Aaron wonders how parents with two children manage.

Sometimes, he wonders how he could choose, if he could only catch one.

He's learned the hard way -- sometimes, you don't get time to think.

Sometimes, two people are falling, and you can only catch one.

Haley doesn't understand that.

She wants to have another child.

She thinks a new beginning would help.

She doesn't understand why he can't even begin to consider the idea.

She thinks he feels he doesn't deserve a second child. Or anything good.

And she's right.

But she doesn't understand that it's more than that.

She doesn't get that more people to love are more pawns for the monsters.

She doesn't get that there's no way to be sure it'll never happen again, that life will never ask him to choose between the rock and the hard place.

She seems to have forgotten the night that she screamed at him to be a real father for once.

She thinks they did what they had to do.

She'll never get that it's the most irrevocably soul-destroying thing.

When two people are falling.

And you can only catch one.

And you know, even as you let it happen, that the other's falling too hard.

…

"_How'd it go?" _Reid asks this question, when JJ walks through the door.

"_Okay,"_ she tells him, and he nods like he believes her.

It's a lie she tells every Tuesday night, and they both know it.

He tells his lies on Fridays –

"_You okay?"_

"_Yeah."_

- except he's not.

These cursory questions and answers - it's their post-counselling ritual.

There's a silent understanding between them, when they've done too much talking in a psychologist's office to do any more together, at least for the night.

They both know only too well that the post-counselling answers they give are a blatant lie used to fend off any further gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, cuts-like-a-knife reliving of the pain.

After she answers, she turns the deadbolt on the door.

And when it's locked, she unlocks it and locks it again, and stares at it, committing the image to memory for the night.

And he holds back a joke about this slightly obsessive-compulsive tendency, because it's too soon to tease her about that. And maybe it always will be.

They're something like roommates now.

She never has been able to set foot back in her apartment.

Morgan and Garcia have packed it up for her, and she's put it all away in a storage locker, planning to find a new place, and accepting Reid's invitation to sleep on his couch in the meantime.

She'd said it would only be a few days. If she couldn't find anything quick, she'd get a hotel room, or crash at Garcia's or Em's, or maybe go spend some time with what little family she has left.

Just a few days, she'd said.

But it's been weeks.

And still, she curls up on his couch at the end of the night, because it's okay to wake up screaming here.

Spence understands.

Some nights, it's his screams that interrupt her nightmares before they get to the worst part.

And then she's the one who understands, for him.

Either way, they never, ever speak of it in the morning.

They never, ever speak of her leaving, either.

…

Gideon has had to talk him out of transferring to a new unit seven times now.

Twice, he's also had to talk him out of leaving the Bureau altogether.

Gideon doesn't understand.

That they're still catching the bad guys, it's not enough.

They're not the well-oiled machine that they used to be.

More like someone's old junker van, just trying to make it down the road.

He knows what no one says out loud – he's not really the boss anymore.

Officially, he is.

Officially, he's their leader.

The reality is something very different.

He and JJ are painfully cordial at the best of times.

At the worst of times, she can't stand the sight of him, and the rest of the team sits in the round table room and pretends that they don't know that she's down the hall in her office, counting to ten, or twenty, or _two-hundred-fucking-thousand_ – whatever it takes to return to calm.

They pretend until Reid or Emily gets up to go find her, and then they scowl at the table top.

Somehow or other, they always get to focusing on the case.

But he thinks Garcia wants to throw things at him. He knows Morgan would like to throw a punch.

Emily has actually lashed out at him, three times now. And he's let her.

He wishes Reid would yell at him, too. It'd be easier than catching his wounded, silent gaze.

He thought it would be easier once JJ's cast was gone, when there were no visible reminders.

But it's not easier.

It's all horribly difficult.

And he wonders if Gideon is keeping the rest of them from requesting a transfer, too.

They keep his secret, and Reid's. They let it be said that JJ was a willing participant, that the drugs in the field belonged to Burgess.

But the understanding that keeps them from destroying his career altogther only goes so far.

Sometimes he'd like to yell at them that they aren't parents, and so they can't possibly understand.

Other times he finds himself waiting for the chance to shield their bodies with his own.

He dreams of using a hail of bullets to prove himself.

And then he questions his own sanity, and Gideon has to talk him into staying all over again.

…

Their healing process doesn't involve anything nearly as theatric as the taking of a self-sacrificing bullet.

Their turning point comes quietly.

It takes time. And a healthy dose of therapy for all involved.

And then one night she comes to him in his office.

It's mere hours after his realization about a brutal New York-based unsub led her to the realization that cracked the case.

Mere hours after their two minds meshed to end one man's reign of terror.

(They save a lot of lives together. They just don't look each other in the eye.)

He's buried in paperwork when she arrives at his door.

She doesn't knock. She just waits in the shadows of the darkened bullpen.

And eventually he looks up and sees her there, and he can't find the words to greet her.

"I think I would have done it," she says simply, and for a moment he wants to cry, because he's already drowning in guilt.

His face betrays nothing, and she continues:

"I know I would have insisted on being armed."

She's leaning against the doorframe, her eyes wandering the knick knacks on his desk and his walls.

"He, uh… he had a metal detector," she admits. "A wand. In the car. And I try to play it out in my head… what would have happened… both of us armed, him realizing it…"

She presses her lips together, lets her gaze wander the floor instead of the desk.

"I heard him make the call," she tells him, one hand fidgeting with the other. "After he realized I had nothing on me. All he said was 'it's okay now'. I didn't really put two and two together… I couldn't think that straight. But he was telling his partner to release Jack."

Hotch hesitates, trying to decide if he's allowed to tell her something.

He's not sure why she's here, not sure if this is the opening it seems to be.

But he finally speaks up:

"He was a street thug. Burgess paid him to hold Jack, and wait for word." A pause, a drop in volume, and: "I've talked to this man seventeen times now, and I still don't know if he really would have killed him or not."

They fall into tense silence at that.

That he obsesses over this is loud and clear.

And it's her turn to wonder if she should go ahead and say something.

"It wouldn't have made it okay," JJ finally says. "To do what you did. Even if he'd killed him, even if he was going to…" Tears come to her eyes. Familiar tears of betrayal.

And he hangs his head, fighting off tears of his own.

"I know," he tells her.

And he leaves _but-maybe-if-he-was-going-to-I-could-tell-myself-I-played-it-right_ unsaid.

He's not sure if he should tell her his side.

He's doesn't know if it's okay to tell her how desperate he was, or how out of his head with fear, or how impossibly much he loves his son.

Or how shrill Haley's voice got when she screamed at him.

She speaks up before he can:

"I don't, um… I can't say that I get it. I don't know that I can say that I forgive you. I don't think I can even say that any of this is over. I just…"

She makes the effort – and it _is_ an effort – to meet his eyes.

"I just think we can just work now," she tells him. "I think maybe you can stop sending me away with Reid or Em or Morgan or Gideon when I should really be at the precinct with you. And you can… stop leaving the couch on the jet for me when it's your turn. You don't have to insist on paying the whole bill when we all get dinner from the same place. You don't have to find an excuse to send me back to the precinct when we call in the canine unit. And, um…" She stops, wipes distractedly at an imaginary lipstick smudge at the corner of her mouth. "Maybe you don't even have to always let me be the one behind the wheel of the car."

He almost smiles an ironic little smile.

Because none of them have ever acknowledged any of his subtle actions out loud.

And because he knows that she's not sure of that last part – she always touches her face when she can't quite get behind what she's saying.

He opens his mouth to let her know that she can drive or not drive whenever she wants, but she speaks first again:

"The truth is, all that stuff does is remind me why things are so different than they used to be. And I don't want to be reminded. I want to forget."

She pauses again, and the heavy silence and the uncertainty in her eyes tells him that she knows she can't forget any more than he can.

"I'd really like to try to make work feel normal again, if I can," she clarifies. "Just as much as we can." She hesitates, not on the words but on the half-smile that threatens to go with them, as she says: "I've _missed_ normal."

"It sounds nice," he barely manages to say, because it also sounds like more than he deserves.

And she nods, and takes a careful step back toward his door.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she tells him.

And that's something normal.

And he's missed 'normal', too.

And suddenly, as she turns and walks away with the something-like-closure she came for, he finds that it's a little bit easier to breathe.

…

There are milestones that move them forward.

The first religious-based killing case that Reid cracks on his own.

The first ritual torture case that doesn't break JJ down.

There's the night that Hotch drives himself and JJ to a crime scene from a precinct, and it doesn't throw her back in time.

And there's the night that Morgan takes pity on a newly-divorced Hotch and insists that he join the rest of them for a drink.

There's one particularly trying day, when all is lost for the young victims of a textbook sadist, and JJ lets Reid wrap her up in his arms and hold on tight.

And they know, without ever saying it out loud, that they'll never be fine.

But they're getting closer to okay.

He wakes her one morning --

"JJ! JJ, hey, you're still sleeping!"

He's excited. High-pitched. Smiling when she cracks open one reluctant eye.

"Spence… you're waking me up to tell me I'm sleeping?" she mumbles, burrowing deeper in the warm cocoon of blankets.

"It's almost eight a.m.!"

She bolts upright –

"Why didn't the alarm clock go off?"

And she's lost in a sleepy haze, trying to make sense of the peaceful smile on his face, when he clues her in.

"JJ, it's Saturday. We're off today."

"Then why… did you…?"

He sits down on the edge of the couch, waits for it to hit her.

And when it does, he can see it on her face.

She settles back against her blankets, smiles a cautious, tiny, contemplative smile.

"We both slept all night, didn't we?"

And he just smiles back at her, and goes to pour them both a bowl of Cheerios.

…

_There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest._

- Bible, Job 3:17

…


End file.
